


Creative Problem Solving

by bermudablue



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Baby Blasters, Body Horror, Dodgy science, Gaster Blasters, Gen, Kid Fic, Mean Science Man Becomes Reluctant Babysitter, Medical Experimentation, Swearing, author doesn't know how to science, journal format, this is not how babies are made
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-09
Updated: 2016-06-11
Packaged: 2018-05-12 20:24:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 44,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5679574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bermudablue/pseuds/bermudablue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Recovered: RS Personal Journal Entries From Pre- 20XX<br/>Author(s): Royal Scientist 19XX - 20XX, [REDACTED], [REDACTED]</p><p>In which Gaster tries to fix a problem but ends up making more.</p><p>Vaguely inspired by the Handplates!AU by zarla-s.<br/>Journal format is for the first chapter only- It's third person POV after that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> testing testing

Recovered: RS Personal Journal Entries From Pre- 20XX

Author(s): Royal Scientist 19XX - 20XX, [REDACTED], [REDACTED]

 

Reformatted for archive by [REDACTED]

Note: Reformatting may have resulted in errors and/or changes in the text, including sections reworded for the sake of coherency. To view the original documents, please contact [REDACTED]

 

\---

 

>View

>Page 178 of 230

 

 

JOURNAL ENTRY 314:

I have a new idea. After almost thirty years after being diagnosed with my condition and I finally have hope again. I've already started on this new project of mine and I must admit, I'm quite excited for it. But I don't want to write down too much of it incase it's a failure. If the King found out... Well. I can't say he'd be too pleased. Especially after the loss of his family so recently.

I don't want to say much about this, even in a private journal entry. It feels ridiculous to be so paranoid in the privacy of my own home. I'm laughing. I'm setting a lot of my hopes on this new project. If I get this right then the possibilities are endless, I could survive my disease and create an army from the pure will of a human soul. I'll stop right there. I'll understand what I mean when I reread these entries and if it all goes wrong then I'd prefer less evidence over correct scientific procedure. 

But at the very least, this is stretching the boundaries of what can be considered ethical.

  


JOURNAL ENTRY 315:

I've enlisted the help of Clements and Kramer for some of the more intricate biology involved. My expertise is in applied magic after all, not in the science involved in creating an artificial life form. And don't worry about it, I've made sure they remain unaware of what they're participating in. They believe the suspension fluid they're working on is meant for small animals but I've asked that they make sure it would produce the same results on larger life forms. They seemed a bit wary at that but I told them that it was 'just in case'. It's funny really, if they really knew what I was doing then I assume they'd be first in line. None of them are in their prime after all.

 

>Skip

 

 

JOURNAL ENTRY 318:

The King has allowed me use of the Souls. I've taken the extracts and built them up into the vague essence of a soul and included a selection of my own DNA. I'd explain more but I've written this down already in the project file and I'm loathe to repeat myself. It sort of resembles a monster soul, which made me nauseous for a while. But I only need it to support the body. I'm sure the others would understand.

Subject A is being put inside of the suspension tomorrow. I don't -

 

>Skip

 

 

JOURNAL ENTRY 340:

I've invested only a fortnight into this project and I feel myself growing warier by the day. The spawn isn't growing at the rate I predicted. Even as I'm writing this entry, I'm watching it's vitals decay. Unless I request the help of the others, the subject is doomed. I can't let them know what I've been doing down here so I guess it will have to die. I'd pity it but it isn't alive anyway. I'll have to speak to the others about the faults in their solution at some point.

  


JOURNAL ENTRY 341:

It's dead. I'll perform an examination of the data tomorrow since it seems too soon tonight. The sight of the suspended dust makes me sick and isn't that just laughable. It wasn't alive. It was never alive and it never would be. I just need to keep believing this is worth it -

 

>Skip

 

 

JOURNAL ENTRY 345:

Using the dust and what parts of the soul I had managed to salvage before it's demise, I've created a new subject. For lack of a better name, I've called it Subject B. 

What use do monsters have for creativity anyway.

 

>Skip

 

 

JOURNAL ENT-

 

>Skip

>Skip

>Skip

 

 

JOURNAL ENTRY 475:

Mother Nature is a merciless bitch. Subjects P through T are in suspension as I write this down. I'm sick and tired of cleaning deceased subjects out of these damn tubes and only yesterday, I stained my lab coat with this awful lumpy mixture of Soul extract and dust. It's a disgusting dark blue colour and when I wandered into the main lab to fetch something to eat, some of the others gave me odd looks. Clements made a comment that I must have leaked pen all over my coat. Kramer laughed. I didn't.

 

>Skip

 

 

JOURNAL ENTRY 478:

Subjects Q and R died before they reached the three week mark, like all of the others. P, S and T have survived for nearly eight weeks now, far longer than any of the others. I have high hopes for this batch. Then again, I've written that before haven't I. I had high hopes for Subject E but then there was an error with the equipment that cause the most horrific mess -

 

>Skip

 

 

JOURNAL ENTRY 490:

There was an error with the equipment. A test for the latest upgrade prototype for the CORE has failed. There was a power surge and it affected my private lab. I'm too numb for anger right now. All of my experiments! All that time lost because the so called "Doctor" Bamford made a drastic miscalculation! And now all of us have suffered for it. I've never seen Clements with such an anger in his being and hopefully, that pathetic excuse for a scientist will be out of this laboratory in less than a week. I just honestly can't believe that a qualified monster could be such a -

(Reformatting Note: at this point i can't make any sense of what he's saying. you can look at this shit yourself it's all nonsense. i picked up translation again about halfway down the page.)

 

 

JOURNAL ENTRY 491:

The specimens survived. I can't believe this. I've put Subjects P and T back into suspension but the sudden surge of power has resulted in more than enough damaged equipment. I've taken Subject S out of the suspension and hopefully putting it on artificial life support should be enough. Growth will continue to be stimulated in P and T. I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do about S.

 

>Skip

 

 

JOURNAL ENTRY 501:

Alright then. I may have made a slight miscalculation of my own.

Subject S has woken up.

 


	2. Object Permanence

JOURNAL ENTRY 502:

Subject S doesn't seem to have the will to move. It seems to have the smallest amount of awareness of it's surroundings, tilting its head in the direction of sounds and such. Sometimes the subject has its eyes open but these times are rare. I purposefully made a loud noise at one point, to test the subject's awareness and it tilted its head to look at me. But although it was looking in my general direction, I get the feeling that it didn't truly see me. Admittedly, the thing’s unseeing gaze is... disturbing. But the fact that it may not be truly sentient makes it easier to discard. Not that I'm willing to discard it just yet. I want to see if it develops further.

 

\---

 

The room was quiet but for the faint scratching of pen on paper and the steady beeping of machinery.

In one corner of the room, the Royal Scientist was leisurely scribbling away in his journal, one long leg crossed over the other. A delicate china tea cup and the remains of his lunch sat on a metal trolley next to him, like the ones used to hold scalpels and such in an operating theatre. His lab coat was draped over the back of the hard plastic chair and all signs indicated that he'd been sitting there for a long time.

The entirety of the other side of the room was taken up by a tangled mess of machines, wires and tubing, all connected to a frail bed-bound form.

Bed-bound in the most literal sense. Thick padded restraints were wound around the wrists and ankles of the small skeleton. Gaster didn't want his subject wandering around without his supervision afterall.

Not that the subject had the strength to wander anyway.

It had been a long and tiring day for the scientist- he considered many of his co-workers to be beneath him and he’d honestly just wanted the peace and quiet of his private lab all day. But there had been another presentation for another project and as the head of the whole department, his presence had been required for once.

He wrote something else down, then changed his mind and crossed it out. He’d begun to write down a correction when he felt it building in his throat. He let it out without a second thought.

He yawned, blinking his eyes sleepily.

Normally, this wouldn’t have been a significant event in the tiring life of W. D. Gaster, but this time there was a response.

Subject S yawned in response. And rather loudly too.

Gaster looked up in confusion, only to find a set of white pupils staring back at him from underneath a pile of blankets. They blinked sleepily as well, as if mimicking his earlier actions.

“Subject?” Gaster asked warily, half-hoping that there would be no response like all the other times.

To his dismay, the creature made a mumbling noise.

He set his journal neatly to the side and stood up on unsteady legs. He shuffled closer to the bed and peered at the thing curiously.

“Can you hear me?” Gaster asked quietly. He realised that of course, it must’ve heard him so he amended the question, “Can you understand me?”

The skeletal creature tried to lift its hand in response but was stopped by the restraints. It looked down in confusion before looking back up at Gaster again. It made a confused sound and its white pupils shrunk inside their sockets.

Gaster shushed gently it on an instinct and barely managed to smother some comforting words. The skeleton looked so very confused that he was struggling not to pity it.

But Gaster’s attempts didn’t work and it began to struggle more, if only weakly. The beeping on the machines sped up a bit.

The scientist made some more comforting noises and laid a hand on the skeleton’s head. He rubbed back and forth as if petting a dog and Subject S moved its head up into the contact.

“Calm down, subject.” He finally said, once the beeping had returned to its normal, steady beat. His voice was steady as well but that was a lie. He was excited on the inside.

He’d managed to create a lifeform! An actual lifeform, and from near scratch as well. He felt the smallest bit of regret that he had no one to share his brilliant creation with but he highly doubted this was completely ethical.

Gaster restrained himself from going to write this all down in his journal, reasoning that if the subject started to panic again he couldn’t trust in his own ability to calm the thing down.

He removed his hand from its forehead and ducked down to search for some of the supplies he kept underneath the bed. As soon as he was out of its direct line of sight, the creature started to wail loudly.

The scientist lifted himself back up again and quickly tried to sooth it, noting the tears in it’s eyes. The crying stopped after a moment, dying down to whimpers.

He ducked down again and again it started to cry out in distress.

“For godsake, I’m only down here!” He snapped in annoyance, popping back up almost comically, “I haven’t disappeared!”

The creature sniffed slightly and its lower jaw began to wobble.

It took him a moment but then his mind connected the dots. He couldn’t help but snort slightly at the thought of it, “Maybe you don’t have a good sense of object permanence yet.”

 _‘Like a baby, really,’_ He thought absently as he prepared the syringe.

“Now don’t worry,” Gaster said soothingly, “I’ve just got something here to help you sleep.”

The creature babbled something back, repeating the sounds he’d just made. Gaster wondered if that was out of recognition or for some other reason. He made a mental note to look into that sort of thing. He flicked the needle and looked down at his subject.

The subject looked back up at him quietly. It looked at the sharp point of the needle and then resumed eye contact without hesitation. The show of trust settled in the pit of Gaster’s gut like a rock.

He injected the sedative into the skeleton’s left eye socket as quickly as he could without causing trauma. He ignored the lump in his throat as he watched the thing’s eyes flicker once then close completely.

Excitement was building inside of him at the thought of all the possibilities this could provide for him.

He picked up his journal and left the room in a rush, eager to check on his other experiments.


	3. Developments

JOURNAL ENTRY 505:

S has started speaking. At first it was just small sounds in response to stimuli, pain or the sound of my voice for example, but just yesterday it said its first word. I can’t help but feel some measure of pride. I remember when this thing was just the tiniest beat of an artificial soul on my worktable and now it’s a living breathing creature making all sorts of interesting sounds and such. I wonder if this is how

(Reformatting Note: the words are scratched out. i can’t tell what it says. i’m not entirely sure i want to know.)

Nevermind that. I’ll have to start coming up with ways to test its abilities. At the rate that it’s developing, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was walking around the lab by next week. I’ll have to talk to Kibble about childhood development and such since I’m certain that they have experience with that sort of thing. Not that I can consider this thing a child at this point.

Silly me, I almost forgot to write this down. Its first word was “stop”.

 

\---

 

“stop.” S coughed out.

Gaster shushed them in frustration.

“I’m trying to concentrate.”

“stop. stop stop stop st- stop!” The skeleton chanted in a childlike tone, choking on the red welling up between its teeth. A great heaving cough sent a splatter of it flying across the scientist’s sleeve.

Gaster bit down a scream and had to take a few breaths to calm himself. He didn’t want to do something he’d regret. Determination was a bitch to get out of white fabric.

He removed the scalpel from the subject’s open chest cavity and waved it at them threateningly.

“Quit squirming around so much, subject,” He snapped as its eyes followed the sharp point in fear, “If you keep it up then I might end up severing the wrong target.”

But all his threatening managed to do was make the creature’s eyes fill up with tears, their tiny white pupils shaking and blurring in and out. Gaster made a mental note to examine the structure of the magic in its eyes to see if he could find a source of the tears. And their purpose.

“st- sto- puh.” it spluttered pathetically, sending more sharp red spilling down it’s mandible.

Gaster resumed his work with a disgruntled sigh, putting more pressure on the half-shattered ribcage than necessary in petty need for revenge. The skeleton made a hoarse and loud shrieking, like a distorted scream of a child.

Gaster ignored it and kept going, feeling more separated from reality with every scream he caused and every incision he made. He felt his very soul harden and brittle as the edges of his vision shrunk away.

Its screams weren’t getting any quieter and thanked his lucky stars that he’d had the foresight to soundproof his private lab many months ago.

 

\---------

 

JOURNAL ENTRY 510:

It’s moving about now. Not in a bipedal stance, of course, but it has started to crawl around on the floor like an animal. Well, maybe closer to an infant than an animal. It does have a lot in common with a dog though, as it seems to take great pleasure in sticking objects in its mouth. At first I thought it was hungry but since I give it enough nutrients through its daily injections I had to dismiss that theory. It took me a while but I finally figured out that it must be some way of figuring an object out. Usually once it has been inside the creature’s mouth once, it doesn’t go back in there again. Unless S takes a particular shine to the object.

 

I found it in a state of panic and choking on one of my pens the other day. I’ve decided to bring it into the main room until further notice to keep an eye on it. Just incase it finds some other way to kill itself that is equally as uncreative.

 

\---

 

“uh- waaah?”

“What is it now?” Gaster groaned, leaning down to send an annoyed look at the creature at his feet.

It looked back up at him with innocent eyes, slightly clawed hands reaching up and grasping at thin air.

“up.” It demanded.

“I can’t pick you up. I’m working.” The scientist spoke through gritted teeth, resolutely trying to ignore his subject’s whining. He refocused his gaze on the clipboard in front of him, taking down notes of the vitals in front of him.

The two skeletons were stood in one of the rooms that splintered off from the main room for once. This room was specifically set aside for incubation, with large glass tubes set slightly in the walls. Gaster had several vague theories on what the tubes might have been built for originally, but for now they were used to hold some of his many subjects from his ongoing experiments.

At first, Gaster had been hopeful that the creature would leave him be after the brutal vivisection he’d performed on it’s soul the other day. But no, it’s curiosity had overcome the lingering fear and it continued to follow Gaster around like a lost puppy. It was persistent, even he could admit that.

S had taken a moment to crawl up to on of the glass walls, the one holding the suspended form of Subject P. After a few annoying minutes of beating its tiny hands on the surface, it seemed to realised it wouldn’t get a response from whatever it was and moved under a workbench to sulk.

But of course, the little monster hadn’t been entertained by that for long. After a while, it had shuffled out and began pestering Gaster for some sort of amusement.

“see? see?” It asked loudly, headbutting Gaster’s shin when he still didn’t respond. It grumbled to itself then latched its teeth onto the coarse fabric of his trousers.

“Subject!” Gaster reprimanded, lifting his leg away in an attempt to shake the creature off. Almost comically, it held on and gazed up at the scientist with round eyes.

“sst- hee?” The thing mumbled around the material in its mouth.

Gaster roughly slammed his foot down but S and its sharp teeth held fast. Infact the dumb creature actually started to _giggle._

Setting his clipboard aside, he crouched down and untangled his clothing from the creature’s muzzle. But showing it any sort of attention had been his first mistake, because as soon as he pushed it away, it scampered right back over and latched on again.

He paid no attention to it’s mumblings this time and just removed the pest again. It latched on for a third time. The scientist let out a short groan of frustration.

Picking his subject up, Gaster held it up to eye level and glared into it’s face.

“What. Do. You. Want.” He gritted out. The creature babbled and stuck it’s own hand in it’s mouth, long bony tail swishing underneath it.

“want see.” It yelled and turned it’s head to look at the tubes again.

Gaster cocked an eyebrow and copied his subject’s movements. It was looking straight at Subject P.

With a long suffering sigh, he made his way over to the smudged glass, S cradled in his arms.

“There,” He sighed, “You’ve seen what it is. Now will you quit bothering me?”

“what that?” S asked instead. It untucked one of a hand from it’s chest and placed it against the smooth surface, leaving the tiniest scratch.

Underneath the subject’s claws, another one of its kind was floating peacefully, curled up on itself with its claws resting on it’s face and long whip-like tail between it’s teeth. The liquid in the container was illuminated a soft blue, leaking faint light onto everything in the room.

It looked so peaceful. A shame he was going to wake it up in a few days.

“It’s another subject,” He replied. He paused and another thought occurred to him.

“You share similar DNA,” He thought outloud, ignoring S’s curious look, “You could almost be considered related. Maybe even brothers.”

“brothers.” S repeated, feeling the weight of the new word on his jaw. His other hand joined the first one and pushed on the glass, “mine?”

Gaster laughed coldly and shook his head, “No. Not for you, it’s the result of _my_ experiment so it belongs to me.” He bounced the creature in his arms indulgently, “Just like you.”

S giggled to itself at the movement and pulled it’s claws back. Gaster took that as a sign to deposit it on the floor, feeling his soul fluctuating wildly. Holding a hand to his chest, he raised himself to his full height and nudged S away with his shoe.

“Now stop bothering me. I don’t have the time for this.”

For once, the creature seemed to get the message and left him be. It nipped once at his shoelaces playfully before it scampered off to amuse itself somewhere else.

Gaster shook his head and then thought no more of it. He returned to peering at the display next to his experiments, noting down the values at different intervals.


	4. Little Brothers

JOURNAL ENTRY 518:

I’ve researched into this and apparently the subject is “teething”. Admittedly I had assistance with this, the help of a clueless lab tech I’ve already forgotten the name of. I vaguely explained what was happening, under the pretense of asking for my niece. Her children had expressed the same symptoms and an examination of the creature’s mouth has proved her theory correct. I suppose I should’ve been suspicious that the subject had an asymmetrical jaw, but I assumed that was a result of being removed from suspension too soon.

As per the lab tech’s suggestion, I’ve bought some toys that should prevent it from chewing up my lab coat again.

 

\---

 

They were in the main room of Gaster’s private lab, while the scientist’s experiments bubbled away in the corner of the room in a complex setup of tubes and beakers and the stark artificial lighting flickered overhead.

Gaster himself stood in the middle of the room, a single glowing syringe in his hand while the other hand was fisted at his side. He didn’t look very pleased. A rapidly cooling cup of coffee and single sandwich was set on the workbench directly next to him, the scientist’s lunch.

It would’ve been a typical day in the lab, except for the fact that a certain creature was nowhere to be found.

“Subject. Come out at once,” He said, voice raised slightly over its normal even tone.

The only response was a childish giggle and a scuffing noise. Gaster pressed his hand against his face in exasperation.

“I’m not going to play your childish games, subject!” He snapped, and whipped his head around as a clattering of equipment sounded from the cupboard a few feet to the left of him.

He snorted in amusement and set the syringe, the subject’s lunch, on the workbench next to his sandwich.

“If you don’t want to come out, then it’s your issue. I assumed you don’t want any food today then.” A small snuffling sound came from the same cupboard as before and Gaster had to suppress a malicious smile.

He started to pace slowly in the vague direction of the cupboard, picking up a sheet of paper to read so it looked like he was doing something meaningful. He could hear a small tapping noise as he crept closer, probably the beat of a nervous subject’s tail against the metal door.

He took a final few steps to get in position then in an instant, leapt forward and flung the cupboard doors open.

“Ah-hah!” Gaster cried out triumphantly, catching the faintest glimpse of white bone before the space seemed to shift.

In this case, literally shift. The light above flickered a moment and then Subject S was running between the scientist’s legs, yipping loudly.

Gaster blinked in confusion and glanced down just in time to see the creature’s whiplike tail pass between his legs. He swore out loud and spun around just in time to witness S’s mad scramble up the side of a workbench.

The light flickered once more and suddenly S was on top of the bench, shrieking in glee as they ran along the length of it.

Gaster felt his soul constrict in his ribcage and moved forward in an attempt to catch them but his hands hit thin air.

“ _SUBJECT._ ” Gaster screeched, a look of absolute fury on his face at being outmaneuvered so easily. S giggled and skidded to a stop in front of the scientist’s lunch, their claws slipping on the smooth surface and accidentally knocking over his coffee.

There was a moment of absolute silence as S sniffed delicately at the sandwich, before clamping his jaws around it and leaping off the table.

Gaster let out a near incoherent shout of rage as his subject dashed out of the room at twice the speed of before, the rapid beat of claws on metal echoing behind them. And then it was silent.

Gaster stood in shock, watching the spilled cold coffee pool onto the table then drip off it.

Then he snapped out of it with a laugh. It bubbled up in his chest and burst out of his throat without his permission. Even he could admit that he sounded hysterical.

“That sneaky rat.” He muttered, slightly impressed. He felt a distant anger gathering in his chest but he had the feeling that this was mostly his fault.

Gaster put his head in his hands and snorted helplessly, “What the hell have I _created_?”

 

\---------

 

JOURNAL ENTRY 521:

I’ve already decided to take another subject out today, T to be specific since P is still too weak but I can’t help but feel nervous. Partly because only one of the subjects is strong enough and I can’t see myself making more after this. But _mostly_ it’s because the first subject is a little terror. I’ve cleared out one of the unused rooms to make a space for it but it _won’t leave me alone._ I’ve locked it in there but it just escapes somehow without unlocking the door. I’ve thought of installing cameras but that would take time. I’ll just have to keep an eye out.

After the (embarrassing) fiasco that happened the other day, I’ve decided to add solid foods to S’s diet. It’s an inefficient way of providing S with energy and it makes my calculations on his magic intake almost completely inaccurate but if it prevents the little shit from stealing my lunches again, I take no issue with it.

 

\---

 

_Tap. Tap tap tap. Click._

Gaster’s long fingers danced over the keyboard with practised ease. His eyes were firmly fixed on the computer screen as he typed in the last of the commands. He tapped enter with a small flourish.

“There.” He sighed, “That should be the last of it.”

He looked down at the subject by his feet and smiled indulgently, “Are you ready to meet your brother?”

Subject S was sitting on the floor, tail skipping along the ground in small happy wags. They yipped once and gazed up at Gaster with unblinking eyes. They looked clueless but Gaster had the vague feeling that they knew more than they were letting on.

“Well then.” He grinned to himself, excitement  and anticipation building in his chest, “Let’s see if our hard work has paid off.”

Another tap on the keyboard and the glass tube of Subject T began to empty out slowly. Both of the onlookers waited patiently for it to drain all the way, before the creature was picked up out of the drained tube and lowered into the room. Gaster started taking off wires and tubes off before it stopped completely, lack of patience pushing him to move.

S circled around underneath it, attempting to balance on their hind legs so they could get a good sniff of the new creature.

“brother!” They mumbled to themselves, bouncing around with enthusiasm, “brother, brother!”

It took a while, but when the last of the equipment had been removed, Gaster gently lifted Subject T’s limp form from the harness and deposited them on a nearby stretcher. He laid a blanket on top of them to keep them warm. S followed his movements with eager eyes.

He started wheeling the stretcher out of the room and down the hallway. S took one last glance at the emptied tube, and then at their other brother, Subject P’s tube before trotting off after the scientist.

“Now subject S,” Gaster’s gaze landed on S as the wheels of the stretcher filled the laboratory with squeaking noises. Gaster focused solely on his eldest subject, “I want you to be very, very careful with the new subject, alright? No roughhousing or playing with them until I say so. They’re very weak.”

“No ruh- rughousing. No play,” S repeated diligently, scrambling to catch up to him. Gaster took a moment to lean down to pick up S by the scruff of their neck and placed them next to T.

The subject gazed up at him with glee and then back down at their younger brother. They laid down and rested their head on the small bundle as they finally made it to their destination.

It was the same room S had woken up in, all of the equipment still intact and in the same places. Some of the tubes had bite marks on but Gaster had already checked that they still functioned properly.

Gaster took a few minutes to attach T to the appropriate machines, being careful not to disturb S too much. S raised their head briefly when a slow beeping started up but soon laid their head back down then nothing happened. They appeared to fall asleep after a while.

The scientist looked at the monitors with small concern but shrugged off the feeling to examine his two subjects.

His soul swelled with pride over his achievements and he ran a hand over the crest of Subject S’s head. He stayed there for a few peaceful moments but then he noticed something that made his soul constrict.

The ends of his fingertips, resting on the top of S’s head, were melting.

He retracted his arm in horror and held his fingers up to his eyes. This seemed to set something off because the matter snapped back into place like nothing had happened.

Gaster examined his shaking hand with a worried gaze, but soon switched it to his subjects. S was still snoozing peacefully and T, who hadn’t moved at all since coming out of suspension, continued to remain still.

He curled his hands together in front of his chest and mustered a shaky smile, “Not too long now, my dears. Not too long.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No Pap in this one yet, sorry. We'll uh, we'll get there. Eventually.


	5. Ashes to Ashes

JOURNAL ENTRY 523:

Subject T is finally awake and it’s vitals are leveling out. I’m beyond relieved about it. There was a scare at one point last night, but thankfully I’d been staying late in the lab that night. I’d fallen asleep at my office desk but Subject S came to find me when the beeping stopped. I couldn’t help but pity the creature, it’s gotten so attached in such a short time. It’s a good job that it found me though - I had to revive Subject T. I bought a pastry from the canteen when I went to get lunch the next day and let him have half as a treat.

The second subject can’t speak yet but curiously enough, S manages to decipher their noises. I assume their development will be similar to S’s, in that it will take at least a month before it’s even capable of walking.

 

\---

 

Subject T made a low whining noise and shoved their head against the railings of the bed. S, who had been curled in the corner of the room with a soft toy owl to chew on, dropped what he was doing and immediately made his way over.

He scrambled up onto the bed through a gap in the railings and put his head between T and the side of it.

“no, no, no,” He grumbled, batting at T’s blanket covered chest with his claw, “don’t hurt.”

T whined petulantly and kicked their legs under the blanket. They glared up at S, sulking.

The other subject’s gaze narrowed, but then he nodded and leapt off the bed gracefully.

“i get food.” He glanced back at his brother, “stay there.”

T made a loud noise and flopped onto their side. The older subject shushed them and went off to find Gaster.

Fortunately, he didn’t have to search for very long. He found Gaster in the room next door, standing in the dim lights with his back to the door. S pushed the door open and peeked around it, his eyes latching onto the scientist’s vague silhouette, lit up by a cyan light.

He hesitated at the threshold of the room, tail swishing nervously around their ankles.

Gaster was humming to himself cheerfully, scalpel in hand and making delicate cuts to something on the workbench in front of him. The subject softly knocked on the door to get his attention.

The humming abruptly stopped. Gaster straightened up but didn’t turn around.

“Subject S?” He called out.

S took that as his cue to talk, “brother’s hungry.”

Gaster sighed in frustration. He waved a hand over his shoulder dismissively, “I’ll be there in a second.”

“okay. i’ll go wait.”

Mission completed, the subject started to leave, door creaked mostly shut behind him but curiosity drew him closer. Space seemed to distort around the door and if Gaster had turned around in that moment, he would’ve witnessed the creature disappearing and reappearing a few feet forward past the door.

Gaster had heard the fading footsteps and the shutting of the door and assumed S had left. He resumed his work but didn’t start humming again. He seemed to be struggling.

The subject didn’t dare move closer than that just incase the scientist noticed him or heard the tapping of his feet. He lifted onto his hind legs and peered around Gaster’s body.

Just in time to see the cyan glow flicker violently and a large drop of black goop splatter onto the workbench. Gaster made a choking noise and the sound made S take a few steps back, the skittering of his clawed feet loud in the quiet of the lab.

“What was - ”

The scientist looked over his shoulder with alarm, leaning over the workbench to shield his work and the blue light from view. He spun back around and covered the light with his hands.

“Subject! Get out of here!” He shouted and S flinched back even more, “ _NOW!_ ”

Crying out in fright, the subject fell back down and fled the room. The door remained shut, with S phasing through it with the same spatial warping powers he’d used before.

His momentum carried him into the wall opposite the door with a solid thud. He lay there, dazed for a moment but Gaster’s furious footsteps reminded him of his current predicament and he scrambled to his feet.

He dashed into the office, clipping his shoulder on the doorway in and sending him tumbling over the hard floor. He didn't bother to get to up again, he simply shuffled into the corner and crawled under the discarded remains of one of Gaster’s lab coats. It was his fault it had been ripped, when Gaster’s hand had slipped a little too much to the right during the last operation and S had clamped his jagged teeth on the scientist’s forearm in response to the pain.

The subject snuffled to himself and buried his muzzle further in the fabric, inhaling the scent of it. It kind of smelt like bleach and decay. Familiar smells.

He whinged to himself. Clamping his jaws on the end of his own tail, he chewed on it in thought with his face still buried in the white cotton.

His thought processes were basic but even the little creature could grasp the concept that Gaster was having one of his Bad Days. Sometimes the scientist was nice to him, and doing things like letting him eat sweet foods and playing games with him. The other day, he even gave him a few soft toys to chew on when his mouth hurt.

But on his Bad Days, it was usually a tiring schedule of operation after operation. Intrusive checkups and procedures just “for the fun of it”.

He suddenly feared leaving his brother alone with the monster and his protective urges finally pushed him out of his cowardice.

Creeping gently down the corridor, the tapping of his paws were drowned out by Gaster’s loud scolding. Moving closer, he managed to make out the words.

“Subject T, cease this immature behaviour at once.” The scientist was interrupted by a sharp yowl of pain from T.

There was a sharp sound of hand striking a hard surface, like bone and a whimper of pain. S sped up, trotting down the hallway at a more than brisk pace.

“Take. The damn. Medicine.” Gaster grit out, sounding like he was at the end of his tether, “My patience is thinning and you don’t have your brother here to protect you so just _quit this_.”

S lingered at the doorway, head low to the ground. He looked up just in time to witness Gaster with his hand shoved up his younger brother’s ribcage, a deep gash on his forearm where the wound inflicted by S the other day had reopened. The two of them were lit by a flickering cyan glow.

The older subject shrieked in horror and latched onto Gaster’s leg, feeling the bones give slightly under his strong bite. Gaster shouted out in pain, his hand jerking within the confines of the young subject’s ribcage. Chaos erupted in the room.

The monitors beeped once and then let out one long piercing tone. S panicked even more, his jaws only clamping down even more. He tried to drag the scientist away, desperate for the monster to stop hurting his brother.

Gaster yelled again but in his clouded mind, S couldn’t make out the words. The scientist lifted his other leg and brutally kicked S’s head away, sending the subject skidding across the floor and into the wall.

S watched in a daze as Gaster’s hands quickly resumed their work, the shrill tone of the equipment sending them both mad. The older subject made a few choking noises, struggling to move his legs and failing.

A few minutes passed before the noise suddenly cut out, leaving the ragged breathing of the scientist and Subject S’s pained gasping as the only things left to fill the room.

Gaster wiped his arm across his face and the sweat that had gathered there, unwittingly streaking red across it as he did so. He turned around slowly and S wished he was anywhere but in that room.

He shuffled about once more, trying to scramble away but Gaster’s was quicker than him, snatching him up by the scruff of his neck and giving him a violent shake.

“I was trying to save them, you ungrateful little shit,” Gaster spat out and S struggled in his grasp, trying to do anything but meet the monster’s eyes.

“Maybe next time I’ll let it die. We’ll see who’s the most upset about that then,” He said maliciously, holding his subject closer, “Here’s a hint: it won’t be me.”

S growled weakly and batted his claws at the monster’s face, much to Gaster’s amusement. The subject changed tactics, craning his head enough to bite down on Gaster’s forearm.

The scientist shouted in alarm and dropped the creature. The seemingly solid bones gave away under the creature’s teeth like soft taffy, stretching grotesquely and shredding between his teeth.

S let go out of shock and as he fell to the ground, strands of goop connected the monster’s arm and his teeth together. He scratched hysterically at his own face, severing a couple strands.

He looked up at Gaster in terror, finding his fear mirrored in the man’s expression. There were a few beats of silence before Gaster’s arm seemed to reassemble, bones reforming and slipping into place like nothing had ever happened.

The room was filled with harsh breathing once more, Gaster bringing a shaking hand to his arm and feeling along the now solid bone.

“I don’t- ” He started but the rest of the words lodged themselves in his throat. He swallowed and then scowled down at his subject.

“If you bite me once more, subject,” He grit out as his body loomed over the small creature threateningly, “Then I swear to every deity out there that I will torture your brother to death and make you watch.”

S could only cower against the wall as Gaster stormed out of the room, dripping bright red in his wake.

He hiccuped a few times, feeling water gathering at the corner of his eye sockets. He warily lifted himself to his feet, glancing at the shut door with suspicion.

He made his way over to his brother, calling out his name mournfully. He jumped onto the bed, hind legs scrambling at the railings. Knocking his head against the covered lump of his brother’s body provided no response and S felt his soul constrict painfully.

“hello?” He called, “wake? brother?”

There was no response, movement or otherwise. S collapsed onto the bed with a distressed huff.

Curling up at the younger subject’s side, he bit down on his own tail and tried his best to ignore the bright blue and thick black stains coating the blanket.

Eventually, the slow beeping of the monitors and the distant noises of the scientist working were enough to lull the creature into an uneasy sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun Fact: I had one of my Bowie albums on repeat for this. Also I set myself the goal of at least two entries per chapter but I figured this was long enough to stand on its own.
> 
> also gaster you need to stop melting on people it's really unsanitary.


	6. Good Manners

JOURNAL ENTRY 524:  
Subject T is deteriorating rapidly. I’ve put the creature on artificial life support but it’s not doing much. I’m at the end of my rope and I’m running out of time. The only thing stopping me from using my plans on Subject S is the hope that my spare subject might yet surprise me.

(Reformatting Note: the words are crossed out neatly) I hate to admit it but I might even miss my eldest subject’s compliance. These days, all he does is snap and growl at me. I’m sure a lot of his actions are based in fear that I’ll retaliate but I’ve found myself.. unenthused when it comes to experiments lately.

\---

The plate made a soft clinking noise as it hit the metal surface of the trolley. Neither of the subjects stirred.

The scientist had brought lunch for his eldest but they were resolutely ignoring him. S hadn’t responded positively to him for days, baring his teeth and while he never bit him, Gaster was annoyed by it. Subject T’s small form lay in the bed next to him, slow beeping and the fact that it hadn’t crumbled into dust yet the only evidence it was alive.

Gaster loomed over the bed and crossed his arms, “I know you’re awake, Subject S. Now is not the time to be acting impertinent.”

S huffed and buried his head deeper into the bedsheet.

The scientist rolled his eyes at the childish act and pulled up a chair. He collapsed in it with a world weary sigh.

“What do you want from me, subject?” He asked, frustration lacing his tone like cyanide. From where it hung off the side of the bed, the older subject’s tail twitched.

“go away.” Came the muffled reply.

Gaster scowled, suppressing the urge to start shouting with difficulty.

Instead he grit out, “You snap at me when I get too close. You refuse to leave Subject T’s side and even worse, you are now refusing to eat. What do you hope to accomplish with this, acting like an idiot?”

S lifted up his head, teeth bared. It would’ve been threatening but the two of them knew that the little monster was easily outmatched. “you hurt him. go away.”

The scientist closed his eyes and counted his breaths. After the grit in his soul had dissolved away, he found the strength to put on a pleasant tone.

“Now, now, subject. I’ve got an offer for you.”

S covered his face again, feigning disinterest but the swish of his tail told Gaster that he was listening closely.

“You stop being a little shi-” He cleared his throat and started again, “You stop acting like this and you let me teach you how to be my assistant. I’ll teach you how to speak with intelligence, how to read scientific papers, reports and even how to write them yourself.”

“And in return,” Gaster paused, and his wait was rewarded with S warily shifting his skull to glare at him with the one eye, “I’ll save your brother from certain death.”

The subject lifted himself to his feet and Gaster felt triumph coursing through him.

Until the subject shifted their stance to a protective one and growled lowly.

“stop it. go. away.” The creature shouted and the scientist saw red.

“Well, you can’t say I didn’t try.” Gaster said in a monotone, scratching S up by the scruff of his neck like he was nothing.

“stop.” It screeched and Gaster laughed, making his way out of the room. S stared back at the almost-dead form of his little brother, legs kicking at the air as he struggled in the monster’s grip. “if he wake he scared! scared with no me!”

“Shut up.” He shook the young monster roughly, “Your babbling is grating on my nerves.”

S hung limp from his grasp, watching him with water-filled eyes.

“I’ve tried to be nice. I’ve tried to be mean.” The scientist glared down at him and S cowered, “I’ve even given you the chance to save him. And you’ve done nothing but spit in my face. Well that’s it.”

“I know just where to put you,” He said cheerily as they came to a stop in front of a locked metal door, “And if your brother dies at this point, it will be all your fault. Remember that, my boy.”

Subject S whined mournfully.

\---------

  
JOURNAL ENTRY 525:  
Subject S makes me feel guilt. I want everything to go back to they way it was, before S forced me to accidentally harm his brother. Hopefully, a while spent alone should teach the thing some manners.

I have some ideas that should work for Subject T, to help them recover. I’m sure S wouldn’t mind lending a bit of himself to his brother. I’ll have to sedate him after the presentation.

\---

The first thing Subject S saw when he woke up was a red light, that flicked in and out of existence a few times before it settled. It lit the room up with a soft glow.

The subject snuffled, lifting his head up from the floor and peered at the doorway. The light was spilling through the open door and the last time he had checked, that door had been very much closed.

“‘ter?” He called out timidly, tail flicking nervously against the wall. After a few long minutes of silence with no response, S felt curious enough to uncurl himself from the corner of the room.

The room itself was small, more of a storage closet than a space fit for the subject. He had no idea how long he’d been in there but he assumed it was six. Six something. Six was the amount of times Gaster had given him pills and as his single method of measuring time, it was the only concept of time he knew.

For a while, he entertained the idea of staying where he was. Gaster had been so angry the past few days, especially after he’d started fighting back against him, that S couldn’t help but be terrified of the other monster.

He hadn’t seen much of the scientist. The lights had been flicked on, S had been pinned down and pills had been forced straight into the manifest of his soul. He couldn’t fight it nor stop it. Begging had earned him a hard stare.

But now though, the door was open and he could leave this place.

He shuffled back nervously, still expecting Gaster to burst in at any moment. But maybe Gaster was busy?

And S knew there was only one thing the scientist could really be busy with. His baby brother.

The thought of Subject T finally got him moving, soft taps of his paws against the cold metal floor. He wondered if T had woken up yet. He wanted to try teaching him words, but only the fun words.

Despite the emergency red lighting, the hallways were dark. He hurried up his steps, his happy thoughts fading like mist and he felt a chill run down his spine.

At the threshold of Subject T’s room, the eldest was practically running and when he tried to stop, ended up skidding across the floor again. He hit the large collection of equipment in the corner with a loud yelp.

Fortunately for him, the equipment was off. The only thing he accomplished was pulling on some of the cords and tubes, sending the limp form on the bed jerking to the side.

The sharp movement caught his eyes and as he untangled himself, he squealed out loudly.

“bro! bro! wake up!” He chanted, pulling himself up to his brother’s side eagerly.

There was no response.

S nudged his muzzle against his brother’s bones but flinched back when he felt how cold they were. He shook his head but managed to stay calm. His instincts told him that T was still alive. Afterall, he wasn’t dust yet, was he?

He moved away from Subject T’s body and started tugging at the bedsheet. He tried to wrap it around the younger subject’s body but it caught on the railing. If he kept tugging on it then he’d end up ripping it.

He puzzled over it for a moment before it hit him.

“no worries!” Subject S said calmly to the limp form, “i know what do.”

He pushed on a lever at the side of the bed, letting the safety railings slide down without issue. With the blanket now unstuck, he could wrap his brother up all nice and cozy, even if all of the wires got in the way and annoyed him. But he was still missing something..

“oh! toy!” He cried, “can’t sleep with no toy.”

He moved to retrieve one of his soft toys. He loved them all equally, as the rare gifts from Gaster that they were.

His thoughts of Gaster distracted him slightly and he wondered when the monster would be back. Fear built up in his ribcage at the thought of being caught and he slipped off the bed.

He fell into the mess of tubes he’d left at the edge of the bed. He fear swelled to its peak, his mind replacing the tangle with grasping hands of the scientist and he yipped in fear. He stumbled back, trapped in his own thoughts, pulling wires and everything along with him.

Like a domino effect, the movement traveled along the cords and pulled at the younger subject and with one great heaving motion, S was finally free.

Unfortunately, so was his baby brother.

Without the railings to stop him, T’s limp form rolled off the bed without resistance. The subject’s head hit the floor with a sound similar to the cracking of an egg, the delicate bones folding inwards.

S was in shock. Wary of the mess on the floor, he stumbled over to T’s body.

“you move?” He asked. He thought that T had rolled off the bed on his own.

He placed a paw on his brother’s bundled up ribcage and pushed gently. It fell straight through it and hit the floor with a muted sound.

He stared down at his foreleg in horror, encased in his brother’s bones. In an instant, the bones melted away into thick dust.

The subject choked, the cloying dust lodging itself in his mouth and irritating his bones. He clawed at his own face, then paused to claw at the dust.

“where you go?” He whined. It took another second for him to realise that his brother was the dust. He shrieked as heavy beats of running started up outside the door.

And that was the scene the Royal Scientist found in Subject T’s room. He’d run all the way from the presentation hall the moment the power had gone out, fearing the worst.

S was clawing at the dust, gathering it between his hands and trying to stick it back together. In the dim red lights, he looked demonic as tears poured down his cheekbones.

Gaster let out a choking noise and the subject’s head shot up to look at him.

“fix fix fix” Subject S screamed over and over, holding up the dust for Gaster to see and crying harder when his brother slipped between his fingers.


	7. Fault Line

JOURNAL ENTRY 530:  
I have not seen Subject S for two days now. But by the stars, I can hear it wailing. I'm planning to have a thorough search of the lab later today because this is getting ridiculous. He needs these injections because I need these readings to be accurate. I've already got one dead test subject on my hands - I don't need another.

It doesn't matter anyway. I have a good idea for where he might be.

  
\---

The subject was avoiding him on purpose.

For the first few hours, he’d done nothing but wander around aimlessly, shrieking and crying out for something. But there had been no response.

After that, he’d slipped into one of the floor vents, where it was nice and warm. He didn’t want to see the scientist ever again, after the last time.

Instead he spent his time around the incubation room, gazing up at the form of his other brother. His last living brother.

If he didn’t focus his eyes, he could almost imagine it was T… and that was how he spent his days. Daydreaming about when T would come out of the tubes and what games they’d play. He wanted to teach his little brother about all the hiding places Gaster had no idea about and how to sneak bites of his food when the scientist wasn’t looking.

They’d play hide and seek, because T was surely better at hiding that Gaster was. And then S would share his toys with T and they could take naps together in the warm spot in the office, on the soft chairs.

But then he’d remember for just a second and-

 _Wh- What have you done?_ Gaster had gasped out like it was the subject’s fault, staring down at him with wide eyes. Shocked eyes that quickly turned to anger.

S, in all his terror, had panicked and a deep fear of his eventual punishment had washed over him. Grabbing his brother in his teeth, he had ran past Gaster and hidden himself away.

And while he sat inside one of the low vents, curled up with the dust covered blanket that was belonged to his brother, he couldn’t help but think about why.

It was the scientist’s fault. Always the scientist’s fault. He didn’t mean to pull him off the bed but clearly Gaster had wanted that to happen. Why else would he have left all the doors open? It was a test.

Subject S would bet anything that he’d been watching at the doorway the whole time. The scientist loved stuff like this.

He’d let S make assumptions and then disprove him at the last second, laughing. Then he’d blame things on him, like when an experiment went wrong, and the scientist would say it was because the subject had distracted him but he  _hadn't!_

So because of that, the creature was hiding. No, avoiding.

He’d discovered a new ability a while ago. It was sort of like vanishing and reappearing, but more like folding space around himself…? S didn’t have the intelligence to explain it. All his childish mind knew was that he could do it and more importantly, that Gaster couldn’t.

It was at this point in time, with S debating the difference between folding and bending that he heard a low, distant noise.

“Ohhhhh, subject?” The Royal Scientist called out.

S gasped in alarm and shuffled further back into the vent. He curled tighter around his brother’s blanket, inhaling the musty smell of the dust to try and calm himself.

The door opened, Gaster silhouetted in the lit doorway. S watched the other monster warily through the vent grate.

“I know you’re in here, subject.”

The subject startled even more, but stayed still. He knew that as soon as he moved, the clatter of his limbs against the metal walls would make an awfully loud noise. He gathered his magic together and made an attempt at jumping to the next room.

Three. Two.

“Come out.” Gaster snapped out. “Now.”

One.

He felt his form start to shift but exhaustion caught up to him, and he felt his body snap back into its original place with a _bang_. He let out a choking noise and slumped down at the pain.

When he finally managed to open his eyes, it was to the sight of Gaster at the vent opening, smiling down at him endearingly.

“There you are,” He said fondly. S whimpered.

He tried to struggle but fighting against the urge to fall asleep and Gaster’s gentle hold was too much for him. He settled for whining his displeasure as he was set on shaky legs.

He fell onto the floor without the scientist’s support and he felt resentment building in his ribcage.

“Now, now, my dear,” Gaster cooed and S gazed up at him in confusion. He didn’t understand why the monster was being so nice.

Gaster fished around in his pockets for something, kneeling on the floor next to his subject’s prone form. It wasn’t until he pulled out a glowing blue vial that the creature realised why the scientist was being so kind.

Gaster made a gesture with his hand and S had to stop himself from automatically responding to the unspoken command.

“Don’t be immature,” Gaster reprimanded and repeated the gesture impatiently.

S hesitated but complied without further resistance, like a well trained dog. He bared his ribcage with his soul already manifested inside of it. He was too tired to fight.

The scientist laid a firm hand on his sternum to keep him still, and carefully tipped the cyan contents of the vial on the soul.

S reacted immediately, trying to curl in on himself as soon as the first drop hit him. He made a choking noise and as the magic was absorbed painfully, let out a hiccup of complaint. He stared up at Gaster pleadingly as shudders wracked his body.

“If you’d come out earlier, I would have given you solid food.” Was Gaster’s only reply, his expression growing colder by the second.

It took a few minutes but eventually the spasms subsided into shivers and Gaster’s hand on his ribs pet him fondly.

“There, there,” He cooed again and S felt revulsion rise up in his throat.

“guh,” He coughed out, “g- go away!”

Gaster scowled down at him, “And why should I do that? If I’d left you alone for much longer then you’d have gone the way of your brother.”

Subject S matched his expression and managed to speak up louder, “y- you hurt him. you hurt me and my brother. st- stop it!”

There was a few moments of silence and S felt regret building in his spluttering soul. Gaster looked at him coldly, expression giving away nothing. Until his face broke out into a smile.

“I didn’t hurt your brother, subject. It was you.”

“no.” S replied feebly but Gaster ignored him.

“I didn’t push Subject T off the bed. It was you. You killed him.”

S trembled under Gaster’s intense gaze and managed to choke out a quiet, “not true.”

The scientist laughed in pity, “Oh but subject, it is true.” He tilted his head to the side and lowered his voice as if telling a secret, “Did you kill him because you were _jealous_ , my dear?”

The subject shrieked in horror and struggled to get out from under Gaster’s firm hand. He felt the monster’s fingertips melt under the pressure as Gaster pushed down even harder. He heard his ribcage creak in protest.

“no no no no no,” He cried out over and over. Gaster tutted down at his panicked subject.

He gathered the weak little monster to his chest and S couldn’t help but bury his face into the familiar scent of bleach and decay. The scientist patted him on the back comfortingly.

“Don’t worry, we all make mistakes.”

S hiccuped and shook his head. Killing something wasn’t just a mistake. He was a murderer, now. It was his fault that his baby brother was dead was dead.

“Just make sure you don’t kill your other brother, hm?”

S wailed in grief. Gaster made shushing noises and stared at the other end of the room, where the body of Subject P floated peacefully and unaware.

Gaster hoped that P grew stronger as time went on. Subject S was becoming a pain to deal with and the sooner he could get rid of him, the better.


	8. Misinterpretation

JOURNAL ENTRY 531:

Finding Subject S was no trouble at all, just as I predicted. The stupid thing had half-starved himself, which wouldn’t have been so bad but I suspect he’s been using magic as well. He seems to have developed a variant of my own magical abilities, which is an interesting development, but for now he only seems to have control over the space aspect of them. I wonder if I could encourage his natural talent without him getting too cocky.

But the problems arose when I did find him. He was in the incubation room, hiding in a vent like a savage animal. It’s hard to believe he has some measure of sentience when he chooses to writhe around in the dark in the pain of magical exhaustion. I managed to give him something to boost him for a while but he still needs to be monitored.

The death of Subject T must’ve put some feeling back into me, because for a moment I couldn’t help but feel

(Reformatting Note: lots of inked out lines on this page. i can barely read any of this.)

pity? sympathy? (RN: lots of crossed out parts here) I hate this thing but for a moment I felt like it was my fault and isn’t that amusing. I wasn’t the one who botched the procedure that sent T into a coma. And I certainly wasn’t the one who  _ killed my own brother out of jealousy _ . At least I can only assume those are its (RN: more lines here) his motives after my admittedly poor decision of only paying attention to one of them and locking the other one in a supply closet for two weeks. I’ve made a lot of poor decisions these past few weeks.

I’ve spoken to the lab tech again under the same excuse and with even vaguer details. She recommended that I should be kind and supportive. It doesn’t deserve

(RN: shit tons of crossing out here. old gas boy needs to calm down.)

Being kind is the last thing I want to do to this little screw-up but if it stops the thing from running off and killing itself out of spite then I’ll have to be the better monster here.

\---

 

“Subject?”

His only reply was a snuffling sound and the shifting of blankets.

Gaster frowned as he stared down at his creation, currently wrapped up in the old, dirty blanket of Subject T.

“I’m speaking to you, subject. Don’t be rude.” He spoke again, struggling to keep his tone low and soothing. The creature was continuing to sulk and avoid the other, although he had agreed to stay in the same room as Gaster after the scientist had resorted to threatening his smallest brother.

It had been an eventful few weeks, Subject S following obediently behind him, if reluctantly with his blanket clutched between his jaws. After entering each room, he’d choose a spot as far away from Gaster as possible and curl up, unmoving for hours on end.

S poked his head out of his cocoon of blankets and glared up at the scientist.

“shoo,” He snapped impatiently, then covered his head again.

The scientist grit his teeth and counted down from ten under his breath. S had been acting like this for ages now, rude and aggressive when it was clearly inappropriate. It was like dealing with a spoiled child except the subject demanded nothing but for him to be left alone.

And while Gaster would’ve happily left the little shit alone, he still had experiments run and data to collect and no creature would get in the way of that. Ordering the creature to do what he wanted didn’t work so now he’d moved onto persuasion and bribery. He  _ needed _ it to do as it was told or else he wouldn’t have the means to strengthen his last hope, Subject P.

The little monster was lucky that his soul wasn’t playing up again or else he probably would’ve gotten a kick in the ribs instead of what happened next.

Gaster dropped to his knees gracefully and deposited the plate in front of S’s blanketed form.

On the delicate china plate was a pastry, a fancy pastry filled with fresh cream and thick chocolate drizzled on top. It had always been a favourite of the scientist’s as a child and for a moment he wondered if it would translate to S through his genes. That was an interesting idea.

Slowly, a bony muzzle emerged from under the fabric. With the smell of chocolate so close, it had been enough to overpower the smell of dust from the blanket.

Gaster resisted impatient the urge to pull the blanket off his subject’s head and settled for pushing his gift closer as an offering.

Finally, the covers fell away from S and he poked his head out fully. They slipped off his shoulders and back as he stepped away to sniff at the chocolate carefully.

A tongue poked out between his teeth and swiped at the chocolate on top. The subject made a happy noise and looked up at Gaster.

Gaster couldn’t help but smile at his creation. It was the first positive reaction he’d gotten in days.

When the scientist didn’t reprimand him for licking at the food, S didn’t hesitate to lean forward and take a bite off the top, the soft pastry breaking away under his teeth. The taste of it was incredibly sweet and S shuffled closer to lap at the inside of it.

Gaster’s grinned widened and he settled down to watch them eat, crossing his legs in front of himself. He couldn’t help but ask, “Is it nice?”

The subject paused mid bite and pulled his head away. He looked up at the scientist with confusion. The scientist met his gaze evenly and the creature stepped back once, his leg hitting the discarded blanket.

He looked back to see what his foot had caught on and saw the abandoned blanket. There was a long, silent pause and when he whipped his head back around, his eyes were wide and fearful. Gaster felt his soul drop.

“ _ nooo, y- you killed- , _ ” The creature lashed out with his claws. Gaster moved back on instinct but it wasn’t aimed at him.

His swipe hit the plate and sent it and the food toppling across the ground. The force of the blow cracked the plate straight down the middle and pieces of it scattered on the floor. The pastry smeared across the ground, inedible.

“ _ go away go away go- _ ” S started up again, the truce between him and the scientist was broken and he stumbled to T’s blanket again, his claws leaving trails of cream on the floor.

But before he could scramble underneath the smell of his brother, it was snatched out of his reach. S turned around fearfully and was met with the looming figure of the scientist, holding the blanket out of reach.

“Oh for godsake!” Gaster shouted, barely managing to keep his voice below shouting.

“Can’t you just give me some peace, subject?” He asked the creature pleadingly, “Can you listen to be for just  _ one second?  _ Just do what I say and I can help Subject P. Just --   _ please. _ ”

S paid no mind to what Gaster was saying. Instead he crouched slightly, before springing up and grabbing onto the edge of the blanket with his teeth before the scientist realised what had happened.

Gaster had tried to move it out the way but he knew firsthand how strong his creation’s jaws were. He didn’t bother trying unhinge S’s jaws, he placed his hand on the top of the creature’s head and pushed downwards.

It started to shred underneath his sharp teeth and with enough force, they ripped through completely and the subject fell to the floor with a scrap of fabric in his mouth.

Gaster held the remains of it over his head and backed away.

“I’m done. I’ve tried everything.” He snapped from behind gritted teeth,”You either get over what’s happened or I- I’ll- ”

His shoulders slumped and he looked down at S with an unreadable expression, “I don’t know what I’ll do but I wish I’d never started this  _ damn project _ .”

And with that the blanket caught fire, burning a brilliant cyan between his fingers. Gaster turned on his heel and walked out the room, taking the burning remains of the blanket with him.

The subject sat on the ground in shock, his eyes flicking from the open door to the remains of Gaster’s gift scattered across the floor. After a while, they shivered and coughed, the scrap of blanket dropping to the floor with a muted splat.

It was wet after it had been in his mouth and sniffing it carefully revealed that it no longer smelt of his brother. He snatched it up anyway and folded the space across the room, slipping into a locked cupboard on the other side of the lab.

In the dark, enclosed space, he couldn’t help but feel a vivid sense of regret. Gaster had been trying to be nice, he reasoned with himself, and he’d been so mean back to him.

The subject wondered if this was how Gaster felt in those weeks after he woke up, when S had tried to play with him and the monster had pushed him away coldly. Then Gaster had been nicer and they had play together everyday even if it was painful sometimes. But now Gaster wanted to play and S didn’t want to.

But Gaster was meaner than S and he’d took away his brother’s blanket... But then again, S had taken T away from Gaster…

The subject sniffed and covered his eyes with his clawed hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> basically 'How to Make Friends: Gaster Edition'  
> that title is a joke because this guy doesn't understand what friends are.  
> more like 'misunderstandings: the musical' am i right oh god help


	9. Afterthoughts

JOURNAL ENTRY 532:

He’s rude and ungrateful. I’m so tired of dealing with his anger and his

(Reformatting Note: yeah that’s all i got. don’t call me lazy it just ends here.)

 

\---

 

A timid noise called out and interrupted his train of thought.

“gaster?”

Gaster’s hand paused in its movements and the ink from his fountain pen made a dark blot on the page. He lifted his head to the doorway of his office.

On the threshold of the room stood Subject S, his feet tapping nervously against the ground and his tail whipping around his ankles. He didn’t meet the scientist’s gaze.

Gaster sighed and leaned back in his chair, dropping his pen on the desk with a dull clatter.

“What do you want now?” He asked carefully, wary of another tantrum, “If you’re asking for that blanket back, I don’t have it.”

S appeared to be on the verge of running away, rocking in and out of the doorway like he would bolt at a moment’s notice. Silence settled in the room like a heavy layer of suffocating dust and the subject only felt more and more nervous.

He mumbled something under his breath, too quiet for Gaster to hear even in the absolute silence of the office.

“Pardon?”

“i’m- ,” S looked up but the intense gaze of the other was too much.

“i’m sorry,” He finally forced out. Gaster blinked.

“For what?” Gaster couldn’t stop himself from wondering out loud, “For the tantrums or the murder?”  
  
The subject stumbled a few feet out the doorway but didn’t retreat any further. The scientist sighed to himself, trying to suppress his feelings of annoyance. He couldn’t help but hold onto the vague hope that things could go back to the way they used to be, except maybe with his oldest subject repurposed as his assistant since there was no way Subject S would be useful for his original purpose now.

He forced a gentle, genuine smile when S raised his head again.

“Don’t worry. It’s alright.” He comforted his creation. It was mostly to comfort himself.

It would serve no purpose, continuing to treat the subject like a murderer, he tried to remind himself.

S gave him a hesitant, watery smile in return. Gaster felt something shift uncomfortably in his ribcage.

“i- ” They paused, eyes shifting to the side and away from the scientist’s overly intense gaze, “i wanna help my brother.” They finally admitted, their tone solemn and resigned.

“You’re doing the right thing,” Gaster praised, folding his journal and pushing it to the side. He stood gracefully, noting how hard his subject had to resist the urge to flee with a small measure of amusement. And a little bit of annoyance.

He supposed they weren’t going to be best friends instantly, though.

He strode to the doorway and past S with a mild sense of impatience. A raised brow over his shoulder in the subject’s direction had the young monster scampering after him, tail low to the ground.

“Come on,” He beckoned with a snap of his fingers, “There are a _lot_ of measurements I need to take.”

 

\---------

 

JOURNAL ENTRY 533:

He’s apologised for his behaviour these past few weeks. I believe he’s finally realised that all of this senseless rebelling is doing nothing but killing his only other family member. He’s told me that he wants to play again. It’s a bit disturbing that he thinks of my examinations as “playing”, even the more painful ones but I suppose the willful ignorance of a child is hard to break. In return for his co-operation, I’ve started teaching him how to read and testing his comprehension skills. I wonder if his intelligence is normal for a monster of his age or if the inducement of growth has caused it. I suppose I won’t know until I get P out of the tubes.

I can’t let Subject P gain the same level of consciousness as his older brother. Self-aware subjects are harder to possess afterall.

 

\---

 

Gaster shuffled the cards on the table in front of him. He examined them for a moment, then picked one seemingly at random.

He held the chosen card up to Subject S and asked him, “What noise does this one make?”

S took a pause of his own as he squinted at the card carefully. The surface of it was marked with black pen in the shape of a snowflake.

“tuh,” He sounded out after a while of thought. The corners of Gaster’s mouth tilted up.

“That’s right.”

The subject let out a triumphant noise in return and the scientist didn’t hesitate this time before flipping another card.

“And this one?” He inquired hopefully. It was a simplified picture of a hand with two fingers held up, the other fingers and thumb crossed over its palm.

“ah!” S answered, rocking back and forth in his seated position. He didn’t know why the scientist had looked so worried when he was explaining the game. Although S had to admit, it had been very boring at first but after Gaster had given him the choice between learning the language and more injections, he’d stuck with learning.

Not that the scientist would’ve given him injections anyway. They were still awaiting the effects of something he’d received about half an hour ago and while they both anxiously awaited the symptoms of it to manifest, Gaster had offered to teach him to read a little.

A picture of a black teardrop was held up next and the subject perked up.

“me!” He cried out cheerfully and Gaster couldn’t help but snort.

“Yes, yes,” He spoke, only slightly condescending, “But what noise does it make?”

“sssss,” S made a hissing noise dutifully.

They continued in a similar fashion for a long time, the subject getting the majority of them correct and for the symbols he was mistaken about, Gaster didn’t hesitate in correcting him. The prolonged time sitting still and doing nothing active was starting to grate on S’s nerves though.

“bored.” The subject sighed instead of answering the latest question from the scientist. The older skeleton frowned down at him, placing the card delicately on the desk.

“But you’ve gotten so far. Although you’re still having trouble remembering the difference between _E_ and _F_ , as well as lowercase _s_ and _w_. Not to mention numbers.”

The subject slumped on the desk, wrapping his tail around himself and blinking sleepily.

“head hurts.” Was the creature’s only response. Gaster rolled his eyes but began shuffling the cards into a neat pile anyway.

“We can continue this at a later date. I think the serum is kicking in.”

The subject whimpered, feeling the pounding behind his eye sockets only increase in intensity. He felt a gentle hand tug his tail out from between his jaws. He opened one eye to peek up at Gaster in confusion.

The scientist wasn’t even looking at him, clipboard out and jotting notes briskly, “I don’t want you biting off your tail on accident.” He explained as an afterthought.

His hand paused mid-word, pen hovering over the paper as he looked down at S, almost apologetically. “This next part might hurt quite a bit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gaster is one of those adults that doesn't like to admit their own faults. so you end up with a situation where the adult blames the kid and then the kid blames themselves. also damn this is really short :(


	10. Linguistics

JOURNAL ENTRY 540:

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve started teaching S how to read. I’ve even managed to pick up some books from a bookstore near the castle, books on handwriting and such. At first I only wanted to teach him pictograms, since I doubt he’s ever really going to leave this lab but I suppose if I’m going to be giving him these books to read… They don’t write books in my language after all and the child can’t learn with only lab reports as reading material.

Thankfully, the subject’s repeated co-operation has resulted in a boost to Subject P’s vitals. I’ve managed to perfect a few serums and with continued application of them, I’m sure the subject will be out of incubation in no time. At this point I have no choice but to take them out, since they don’t seem to be growing anymore. Perhaps the suspension is ineffective after a certain period of time.

 

\---

 

The subject hummed to himself, a pencil gripped carefully in his clawed hands and pressed onto the page at random intervals. His motions were as aimless as his humming and the scientist couldn’t resist wandering closer to peer over the creature’s shoulder.

Upon seeing the mess the boy had made of his worksheet, Gaster cleared his throat pointedly. S whipped his head around and stared up at him cautiously.

Gaster didn’t even need to say anything as S looked between the paper and the scientist nervously.

“i’m sorry,” He apologised, “i got bored.”

Gaster made a noise of acknowledgement but he didn’t seem all that bothered by S’s deviation from the task he’d been set. Instead he leaned forward and tapped a finger against the paper pointedly.

“What’s this, then?” He asked, tracing the sharp tip of his finger along a shaky line where S had pressed down with too much force and ripped a hole in the page.

The subject mumbled something under their breath and shifted in embarrassment. He tried to shuffle the papers closer to himself to hide them but Gaster’s finger held them down. Gaster cleared his throat.

“it’s you.” S admitted after a long pause. He tapped his fingers on the edge of the office desk and ducked his head, “and me. and t.”

Gaster squinted at the page and after a while, he could identify some of the more vaguer shapes. At the top of the page were scattered pictograms, specifically S’s practise for the letters A through I since he seemed to be having trouble deciphering the number of fingers on each hand.

But the more interesting section of the page was settled at the bottom. A large black mass, which he assumed was himself, dominated the majority of the page. On the opposite side of the paper, inside of a box were two stick figures with large teeth with a scribbled ball in between them.

“I’m quite scary, aren’t I?” Gaster commented idly, ignoring when S shrunk down into his seat slightly.

“not scary. just big.” The subject commented with a shrug, swinging his feet as his nerves only grew. He didn’t like it when the scientist loomed over him.

The creature pointed at different objects on the page, “you’re big so you get this side. you need space for esh- echs- uh, sci-ents things.” He moved his hand to the small box and traced the edges of it, “this is our house. ‘cause monster live in houses but we get one for just us.”

“And what’s the scribble? Was that meant to be Subject P?”

S shook his head as if Gaster was being ridiculous, “no, no. p live with you so you not lone- alone. and the sh- sker -ibble is a pastry. it’s the one with apples in it but i forgot what colour apples are.”

The scientist hummed thoughtfully and felt his soul twist painfully as his eyes drifted over the drawing. Especially at the tiny box with the shoddily drawn depictions of two subjects.

“Subject, I hate to remind you of this but Subject T is- ”

S interrupted him with a loud noise, glaring up at him defiantly. His tail whipped through the air and hit the solid part of the desk with a crack.

“Subject T is- ” The scientist began again but there was another bang of the subject’s tail against the draws. Instead of trying for a third time, he sighed.

He slipped the paper from underneath S’s claws and replaced it with a clean sheet.

“This is a nice drawing but try not to get distracted this time.” He scolded gently, sliding more worksheets closer to the boy and pressing his wrist onto the desk.

“If you’re getting bored of pictograms, practise the written form of common speak instead. I want this sheet filled with the common alphabet by the time I bring you dinner, understand?”

The subject nodded dutifully and after a hesitant look between Gaster’s blank stare and the stolen drawing, touched his pencil to paper and began writing.

Gaster folded the picture neatly and slipped it into his pocket, next to a full but capped syringe. He’d actually come to find S for a good reason but for some reason, he didn’t feel much like testing it out on his subject this time.

 

\---------

 

JOURNAL ENTRY 542:

I’ve given him some books to keep him entertained. Every moment spent with my oldest subject reminds me of the reasons why I never wanted children. He’s so _inquisitive,_ asking questions at all hours of the day. Yesterday he spent a good few hours asking me if flowers really existed. Of course, the boy has never seen a flower in his life so I suppose the question is understandable. Doesn't make his pestering any less annoying though. I’m tempted to bring one of the golden flowers from the King’s garden to show to him but would that only encourage his curiosity? I’ve seen him sniffing around the elevator doors a few times and I’m waiting for him to ask questions about where I disappear to at times.

 

\---

 

A faint noise coming from the incubation room made the scientist hesitate at the door.

As he’d been walking past, he’d been completely engrossed in the report in his hands. The report was written by one of his lazier co-workers and was honestly a mess. He’d never read such a shoddy piece of literature in his life- one of the observations was just the word “ _pink_ ” on it’s own. Pink what? Did the liquid turn pink? Did pink precipitate form in the solution?

The only thing that was going to be pink was this monster’s notice of termination of employment, the scientist had grumbled to himself. Until an equally faint mumbling had interrupted his thought process.

He paused outside of the door, pressing an ear against it and straining until he heard the faint but unmistakable sound of his subject talking. So that’s where the little bugger had disappeared to.

Ever since Gaster had begun teaching him, S had been vanishing a lot more. Of course, he still turned up at meal times and for experiments, and followed nearly every command without question so the scientist took no issue with it at first. But even he didn’t want to admit that he sort of… missed the presence of his subject.

He pressed on the door slightly and it gave away under his hand. Through the now partially opened door, he heard his subject a lot clearer.

“- and then fluffy uh, bunny f- fuh? fuh- oh- nnn- duh.... i, i don’t know that word,” There was a pause and the shuffling of book pages, before he continued, “i’ll ask later. fuh-something the yellow duck.”

It took a moment but eventually it clicked inside of Gaster’s mind. His eldest creation was reading one of the books he’d given to him out loud. He felt a small measure of pride in his chest, some of his annoyance at his co-workers dissipating.

He pushed on the door even more, slowly so it didn’t make a loud creaking noise, until Subject S was in view, hunched over an open book with his finger tracing the words.

Gaster startled as S’s voice changed pitch to something with a higher octave. For a moment, he’d thought he’d been caught sneaking around his own lab like a common criminal but he realised that the boy was just reading some of the dialogue.

“‘i don’t know where your h- hu- hat is,’ creed the duck sad,” Another paused and Gaster watched the subject hold the book closer to his face, “sad- lee? sadly.”

The book was lowered and S tilted his head up at his brother’s suspended form.

“i think that means the duck is sad.” He commented decisively, nodding his head as if he’d figured out a big mystery.

The subject continued to read aloud in a steady voice. He struggled a lot with the pronunciation but Gaster was pleased to hear that he could read at all. He silently commended his own decision to bring in some children’s books to amuse Subject S with.

As amusing as it was to watch something with the mental age of a four year old try to struggle through a quantum physics textbook, eventually he’d tired of it and bought something more age appropriate into the lab.

The scientist started to back away from the door, deciding to bother the child at another time but the gentle movement of S closing the book caught his eye.

“i like this book,” S stared down at the book blankly, then carefully placed it on the floor, “but the one with fluffy bunny’s little brother is better.”

Gaster found himself prodding the door open further before he even registered it. The subject whipped his head up in surprise and for a second, Gaster found himself mirroring his expression.

“Subject?” He called out, leaning around the half-open door, “Would you like to help me with something important?”

S perked up, scooping up the book and at the scientist’s side in an instant. The creature looked between the older skeleton and his brother with anticipation.

“is this to do with my brother?” He asked eagerly, bouncing on the balls of his feet. Gaster snorted and shook his head.

“Not today, my boy. I just wondered if you’d help me correct this report.” He held it up with an expression of disdain, “I was going to add my commentary to it but I doubt it’s worth my time.”

“sooo, what do you want me to do?”

“Scribble on it. Draw a picture of a dog, I don’t care.” Gaster shrugged, handing the paper to S without much more fanfare, “You wanted more drawing paper, didn’t you?”

The subject stared down at the paper and when he lifted his head he was grinning. He nodded his head cheerily and turned to retreat into the incubation room.

Gaster cleared his throat pointedly and S stopped in his tracks.

“Maybe,” The scientist began, swallowing thickly, “Maybe it’s best if you left your brother alone for today.”

At S’s confused expression, he mustered up a smile, “Come sit in my office with me.”

And at that, he spun on his heel and started to walk away briskly. The subject got the message loud and clear and pulled the door shut behind him.

“oh i forgot” Gaster heard the creature mumble to himself faintly.

He glanced over his shoulder just in time to see S poke their head around the door.

“bye little bro,” The subject spoke into the incubation room and Gaster had to forcibly ungrit his teeth. He settled for snapping his fingers instead and S’s eyes flicked to the sound.

His subject followed obediently behind him. Gaster only hoped that the boy wasn’t becoming too attached to this brother as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gaster why are you jealous of this comatose child  
> i suppose it's weird when things stop hero worshipping you


	11. Another One

JOURNAL ENTRY 543:

I’m taking measures to ensure my eldest doesn’t get too attached to his brother. It’s not that Subject P is weak, quite the opposite infact. P has a very strong magical core, if a bit delicate. I just dread the idea of S becoming upset if something goes wrong - I’m not in this lab at all hours after all. Once P is out of incubation, I’ll probably be even more present in the lab than I was before but I’ll still need to fetch food.

I’m also a bit worried about P’s intellectual capabilities. I suspect that the extended time in suspension has resulted in a few.. defects. Of course, that can only be a positive for my future plans but I have this highly irrational fear of distressing Subject S unnecessarily. Stupid isn’t, I think I’ve actually gotten attached to the creature.

(Reformatting Note: whole bunch of crossed out lines over here that i can’t read. picked up translation on the next entry.)

 

\---

 

The book made a snap sound when it hit the desk, it’s pages fluttering in the aftermath of the movement.

Gaster moved his hands out of the way in surprise, meeting the petulant stare of his subject with a raised brow.

“What’s this all about?” He asked with a tinge of annoyance, gripping his pen tightly in his fist as he resisted the urge to sweep the storybook off the lab reports he was examining. For the past few weeks, he'd been getting along with his creation, playing games in-between lessons. He'd even been bringing him treats after some of the more painful procedures such as the bone marrow extraction just a few days ago.

But today was not one of his better days.

Subject S met his gaze without hesitation or cowardice, frowning up at him. The boy leaned forward and jabbed his finger on the page forcefully.

“why don’t i have that?” The subject ignored the scientist’s question to ask one of his own instead. His lower jaw wobbled slightly.

“Have what?” Gaster huffed, nudging the book to the edge of the desk. His soul felt particularly brittle today and he felt no sympathy for the child today.

“a mom.” The child snapped out in return. His frown was almost a perfect mimic of Gaster.

Gaster huffed in frustration, bring his hands up to his face to rub against his tired eye sockets. He snapped at his subject, half-pleading with the child, “I don’t have time for this. Can’t you leave it for now?”

He shook his head, refusing to break eye contact with the scientist. He even pushed the book closer to the man in his impatience.

“i want a mom.” S demanded, narrowing his eyes.

“You don’t have a mother.” Gaster bit out, flicking his gaze down to the open page despite himself. It was mid-story, with some kind of pink turtle-monster tucking another, smaller turtle in a fetching shade of purple into bed with a kiss on the forehead. The scientist internally berated himself for picking this book out and made a note to review the contents of each book in future.

“ _why not?_ ”

Gaster shrugged dismissively, “You just don’t. You were born in this lab like all the other subjects and at the rate you’re going, you’re probably going to die here.” He sent his subject a glare, his tone half-joking.

S ignored the threat, probably aware that Gaster would never end his life on purpose. Instead he averted his eyes and brought his hand to his mouth.

“but…” The creature shuffled back and forth, tail tapping on the floor.

Gaster pushed the book away, refocusing on the work in front of him without further comment. He waved his hand in S’s direction idly, dismissing the younger skeleton.

There was a long pause but the subject didn’t shift. When he raised his head again, it was to a determined expression on his creation’s face.

“can you make one?”

“What?” The scientist’s face scrunched up.

“make me a mom,” S explained, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, “you made me a brother. two brothers. so can you make me a mom?”

“Subject, I can’t just _create_ a mother.”

“ _please?_ ” S tried valiantly, eyes widening comically in puppy dog eyes. It might have worked, if not for the jagged teeth and long muzzle.

“Nice try but no. I’m not making anything else anytime soon.” Gaster said dryly and the subject slumped.

“no way i was made in a test tube. fluffy bunny has a momma.” The boy mumbled under his breath. The scientist rolled his eyes and shooed him impatiently.

“Believe what you want on your own time but right now I am _busy._ ” He stressed, pushing the book off the table and into his oldest creation’s arms.

“i’m gonna find a mom for me and- and t. for when he gets back.” S declared, clutching his story to his chest and glaring up at his creator. Said creator ignored him easily, remaining silent but for the scratching of pen on paper.

After receiving no response, he huffed dramatically and stormed out of the room.

The scientist stayed still for a moment incase the boy came back for another round, but after no sign of him returning the skeleton leant back in his office chair. He dropped his pen on his desk with a flair of frustration and sighed to himself. It seemed like dramatic gestures ran in the family, he mused and then thought no more of it.

 

\---------

 

JOURNAL ENTRY 545:

I think he’s sulking. After his questions earlier this week, I suppose I should’ve expected this. Normally, I wouldn’t have a problem with it as long as he turns up to his check ups on time and comes when I call him but he’s not. I had to pull him out of the ventilation shafts the other day and he _still_ wouldn’t respond to any of my questions. I'm not in the mood to deal with this since my soul feels particularly delicate lately. This is the last straw. Honestly, the books were a good idea but apparently I forgot that stimulating a child’s overactive imagination can be a very _bad_ idea.

The elevator doors have claw marks on them.

\---

“Subject. What does this say?” Gaster tried again, forcing his voice to be patient and pleasant.

“shoo.” S replied, impatient and unpleasant. He even stuck his tongue out at the man.

The scientist sighed and let the card drop to the table with a soft tapping noise. He’d had another go at coaxing conversation out of the boy but they were sticking firmly to his ideas.

His ideas of a ‘ _real’_ family out in the ‘ _real’_ world. The real world from his storybooks where the sun was always shining and people were always smiling and happy. Laughing and playing, because there was no such thing as experiments and hard work in the ‘real’ world.

At one point he’d gained a response that indicated the child thought T was out there. Gaster suddenly wished he’d explained the concept of death a little better to his creation, instead of brushing them aside with the excuse of “ _not dead, he’s on vacation._ ”

Well, he was certainly paying the price for it now.

“I didn’t want to bring this up,” Gaster started with a low tone of voice and S watched him warily.

“But I know you’ve been trying to leave the lab.” He finished after a pause. S stilled.

The scientist raised a finger and waved it at his subject in warning. The child’s eyes followed it as it moved back and forth in a way that would’ve made the man snort if he wasn’t being so serious.

“Stop it.” He snapped, “If you touch that elevator again then I’ll have to tie you to a post like a dog. And neither of us want that, do we?”

S creased their brow and after a moment’s pause, shook their head slowly.

“but- ” They whined, “how am i finding t if i’m stuck?”

Gaster rolled his eyes and started shuffling the cards idly, “T is on vacation. He’s gone away for a long time and he’s having lots of fun without you. You don’t want me to bring him back so I have to experiment on him again, hm?”

Another hesitation from the subject and his thin tail curled around his form.

“i jus’ want him back.” S sniffed, clawed hands fiddling with the delicate tip of his tail. A few of his claws were chipped at the end, blunt from his frantic scrabbling at the edge of the elevator doors.

“So do I but life isn’t fair.”

The gentle shuffling of cards stopped. Gaster placed one on the table with a little more force than necessary and then looked at his creation expectantly.

“How about this one?”

S mumbled something under their breath.

“Speak up.”

“hate this.” The child repeated louder, “hate _you_.”

“The _card_ , if you’d please.” The scientist grit out.

A silence hung between them as the subject fought against submitting to his creator. His soul hammered in his rib cage and -

“ _f._ ” S spat out reluctantly and Gaster’s face split into a cheerful, patronising grin.

“There, that wasn’t so difficult now, was it?” He swapped the cards without a second glance, eyes burning holes into his subject. The child stared down at the table, solemn and resigned in a way that no child should be.

“Again.”


	12. Growing Pains

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> do you guys know any different words for soul cause this is getting silly

JOURNAL ENTRY 548:

I swear, sometimes I spend more time searching for errant subjects than I do actually experimenting.

 

\---

 

“Come on. _Out_.”

“nooooo, dun wanna,” S cried out clinging onto the edge of the vent frantically.

Gaster tried in vain to keep his hold on the young monster’s hind legs but in the child’s panic, they kicked out and hit the scientist square in the face.

The scientist flew back with a hand to his mouth. He swore loudly and touched his jaw delicately, feeling a bruise forming along the edge of it.

S repeated the swear word back at him, even louder and scrambled back into the warm darkness of the vent.

Gaster growled in frustration and gathered the merger remains of his magic together. His soul spluttered and coughed under the treatment but it obeyed long enough for him to get a decent grasp on his target.

There was a stunned yelp before S came tumbling out of the vent with his rib cage lit up in a brilliant cobalt.

Gaster wheezed and the magic dissipated with a pop and a spark of displaced magic.

Coughing, the older skeleton scooped his eldest subject into his arms. S twitched slightly, still a bit bemused over what had just happened and blinked up at his carrier in what he assumed was shock.

Walking through the corridors briskly, Gaster found a suitably clean workbench in the main lab and dumped his subject onto the surface, feeling the strain and growing nausea in his throat.

Not that skeletons could really throw up but magical displacement out of the mouth was never pretty.

He flipped over S’s limp form, leaving him prone with his ribcage bared. S stared up at him in a daze, his white pupils fuzzy and vague.

“hurts,” The subject whimpered.

Gaster looked down at him, a brow raised in concern. He didn't think he'd been that rough with his charge, after all, he didn't have much magic to spare these days.

But the pained expression told him something was wrong so with a sigh, he reluctantly put the injections he was about to administer to the side and gestured for him to summon his soul.

A moment later and S jerkily obeyed, an inverted heart manifesting just inside of his ribcage and the scientist’s own soul dropped in horror.

The heart was beating irregularly and flickering in and out of existence as the subject struggled to resist the urge to let it dissipate. The one side was a darker blue than the other and swollen outwards slightly.

The swelling was so slight that he wasn't surprised he's missed it on the last check-up. It must've been at least a fortnight since he'd last thought to check on his creation’s magical core.

Gaster tutted to himself and reached out with careful hands. He cushioned the heart in his palms and pulled it out into the open air, noting S’s shudder when his thumb accidentally brushed against the edge of the bruising.

Peering closer revealed the source of all of this - a tiny black spot in the centre of the hiccuping mass where the thin skin had ripped. Gaster sighed.

By using his soul-grabbing magic on the child, he’d accidentally done the magical equivalent of shaking someone’s leg when they had a broken ankle. He mentally swore.

“Looks like you've inherited more from me than we first thought, my boy,” The scientist muttered under his breath, replacing the soul inside of the subject’s chest cavity.

“Up we go,” Gaster huffed, lifting up the child with a heaving breath. There was only a pained gasp in response, S remaining limp in his arms.

He carried him into the other room, T’s old bedroom but S was too out of it to recognise. After a moment’s pause, his eyes locked into the bed tucked away into the corner and he let out a triumphant noise. Although he was less interested in the bed itself and more in what was attached to the bed.

The next thing S was aware of was his hands being pulled gently away from his chest and pinned at his sides. Gaster gave him an almost.. anxious glance as he tightened the restraints around his arms and then his legs.

“Don't worry, I've done this a thousand times before on myself,” He soothed them, although half the words didn't register in S’s clouded mind.

The scientist cupped his hands around the boy’s soul and pulled it out again without further fanfare. His hands fumbled on the medical tray nearby and after an absent glance to make sure it was clean enough, used the scalpel to make a small incision on the subject’s heart.

The reaction was instantaneous, with S screaming out in shock and pain as the soul began to bleed blue concentrate all over Gaster’s fingers.

S struggled against the restraints, his screeching calming down into hiccuping sobs after a while. Gaster watched him with eyes full of pity.

“Hurts, doesn't it?” He commented bitterly, then paused.

“You'll get used to it,” He continued, making another careful incision on the frantically beating heart. He held it closer to himself, mindful of his creation’s thrashing form and a spray of brilliant blue soaked into his lab coat’s sleeve.

Realising that the pain wasn't going to stop and unable to curl up into a protective ball, S did the next logical thing in his frenzied mind and tried to de-manifest his soul.

It shuddered in place a moment, it's light flickering across Gaster’s startled face before it solidified into a bright blue. The older skeleton kept a firm hold on the younger’s soul with a lot of effort, wiping a drop of sweat from his forehead in a jerky movement. If S had managed to dissipate his soul at that point, it wouldn’t have ended well for the small monster.

Gaster tried to smile down at the subject but it came out more like a terrifying grimace as he felt the strain of the magic usage on his own soul. S hiccuped and the man could’ve sworn that his eyes flickered from their fuzzy white pupils into cyan rings.

But he blinked and they were back to normal, if hazed over from agony.

The scientist made one final cut, discarding the scalpel with a careless throw. It clattered against the metal of the tray but that sound was nothing in comparison to the unnatural sobbing that came from the small, bed-bound form.

“Hard part done.” Gaster mumbled to himself, hands hovering over his remaining tools anxiously as he tried to ignore the cries of his oldest child.

“At least he’s not dead yet,” He commented to himself, finally finding what he was looking for and holding it aloft. He hesitated, counting down from five in an attempt to steady his breathing and after  _ one, _ he pushed the plastic tube into the boy’s soul with tired hands.

S whimpered and whined, aware that a foreign object was inside his core but unable to do anything about it. Gaster knew from personal experience that aside from the cuts, the tube wasn’t really causing him any pain and just felt really uncomfortable.

He leant over and flicked a switch on the machine the tube was connected to, hearing the familiar, telltale sound of the suction starting up. He watched warily, but his shoulders sunk in relief as he spotted the black clumps being sucked into the tube.

S sobbed again but it was more from confusion this time, staring up at Gaster with a terrified expression.

“wh- wh- whuh-” S choked out as the scientist moved the end around, starting to clean up the festering wound in the subject’s soul.

“ _ Soul rot _ .” The man supplied easily, feeling exhaustion wash over him but unprepared to let go of his hold on S yet. At S’s confused chirp, he continued.

“ _ Soul rot  _ is when the magical core of a monster becomes infected for some reason. Nobody knows what causes it but some people claim that it’s a result of being  _ evil _ .” At that, he scoffed.

“I doubt that’s true though. I believe that genes play some part in it.” His eyes were focused on the soul in front of him but they flicked up to meet the subject’s gaze for a second.

“Whatever genes you must have inherited from me, they must be the ones to cause it. The rotting is literal rotting in this case. Parts of your soul die off and turn black, although it’ve never seen it happen on the  _ inside  _ before.” He frowned, examining a splash of black goop across his finger curiously.

And then it clicked into place in the creature’s mind. That day he’d gone to find the scientist in search of food for T - with the dark room and the cyan glow. The black gloop that splattered on the table.

“y- your soul is,” S stuttered, straining against the ties as the scientist ran the tube over the last of the clumps of black. He pulled back, leaving the wound clean and rot free. In all honesty, it wasn’t the worst state Gaster had seen a soul in.

He delicately pressed the heart back into his subject’s rib cage and released the magic on it, letting it soak back into the fragile bones.

“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt,” Gaster commented idly, bringing his hands up to his own chest to form the soul in between them. He formed it on the outside of his clothes with an ease born from practise. It was the same deep ocean blue as his subject’s and beat steadily about an inch above his palms.

It would’ve been a very average soul if not for the great big chunks missing from some of it. On the left side, fragile strands barely held it from falling apart around the gaping hole on that section. Gaster grimaced at the disgusting sight of it.

“Side effects include increased aggression and chest pains. Which explains why you’ve been so moody these past few weeks.” He said the first part in a dull monotone, as if reciting from a book or a doctor’s diagnosis.

He continued as S looked his fill of the wounds that littered his magical core, “Worst side effects are loss of magical ability and eventual death. This is what happened to most of the other subjects before you.”

The subject flinched back as another steady beat of the soul resulted in liquid spluttering out and dribbling down the side of it. Gaster clasped his hands together and vanished the gruesome sight.

“Well then,” He spoke with false cheer, “Now you’ve seen how truly revolting I am on the inside, now we just have to figure out how to stop you getting that bad.”

S watched his creator pace around the room warily, tugging on the restraints but not feeling like mentioning it in case the monster turned that intense expression on him.

After a few minutes of thought, occasionally interrupting the heavy silence with mumbling and muttering, the scientist stopped.

“It was inside of your soul,” He said slowly. Not know what else to do, S nodded hesitantly.

“The only thing that’s been on the inside of your soul is the injections.” He lowered his head but faltered, “That must mean the serum is -”

The subject never heard the end of that sentence because Gaster was dashing out of the room, the tail of his lab coat whipping behind him.

The door banged against the wall but S could only watch it swing closed afterwards. He gave the restraints another hopeful tug but they were too tight to wiggle out of.

So instead, the child laid back and held their breath, straining their hearing enough so they could listen to the loud fumbling and clatter of Gaster working on something in the next room.

They heard their creator swear loudly and the sound of something smashing against the floor hit their ears.

S hiccuped.


	13. Exhaustion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> magical exhaustion makes your soul all soft and vulnerable. like play dough. squish squish squish.  
> too tired to be mean for once.

(Reformatting Note: this page was absolutely covered in black stuff. it might be ink stains. i’ve tried to read it through the stains best i could.)

 

JOURNAL ENTRY 549:

I need to re (turn? remove?) - (RN: black patch here) - (h?) ope it’s no - (RN: more damage to the page) - late. I’m going to - (RN: large amount of damage) - (co?) uld be soul damage. How could I be so stupid? Stupid enou (gh?) - (RN: black stains) - (t?) o kill my last hope.

(RN: this ain’t worth the money i swear)

 

\---

 

The next time S woke up, it was to a dull throbbing in his core and to arms gently lifting him from the bed. He murmured in protest of his disturbed sleep but he was quickly shushed.

“Don’t make a fuss, my boy. I’m just making room.”

And as carefully as they picked him up, the scientist put him down again, to the left of where he was before. He must’ve taken the restraints off at some point and while S felt a wave of gratitude wash over him, he was too tired to bother thanking him.

Gaster’s magical aura felt weird. The subject didn’t want to open his eyes to look but it felt less… sour. Almost pleasant.

It took him a while to realise but the reason why was placed next to him in the bed.

It wasn’t Gaster’s magic that was weird, it was this _new thing_ that was polluting the air with sweetness _._ Unable to resist the urge, S shifted closer to the _new thing,_ nudging his head against it and hitting a bundle of cloth.

There was a pause, with the subject just resting his sleepy head against the lump and soaking in the feel of new yet strangely familiar magic. Then Gaster nudged his head off to the side.

“There,” He mumbled as he lifted the blanket off, baring the new thing to the chilled air of the lab.

Feeling the movement inches from his nose, S mustered up the effort to flick an eye up. He blinked a few times to clear his vision but even through the fuzz he knew what it was.

“ _t_ …” He breathed out, nuzzling his head into the smaller skeleton’s. The tiny form shifted in response and made a noise of its own, the tiniest little whimper.

S could feel Gaster’s form looming over the two of them, radiating concern but the feeling of pure happiness welling up in his soul was soothing enough to send him to sleep.

The last thing he felt was a warm hand run over his forehead.

 

\--------

 

JOURNAL ENTRY 550:

Extraction of Subject P was successful. I immediately performed a check-up on it’s soul but thankfully there were no signs of malignant growths. Lucky really, after the long exposure the subject has had to the solution but I suppose since it wasn’t exposed to the same concentration as S. I’ve made a mess of the incubation room for nothing but I’ll leave it for now since I’m honestly feeling so exhausted. Currently, the two subjects are sleeping and after a moment of weakness on my part, I’ve put them together in the same bed. It’s awfully cold in this lab, after all.

 

\---

 

A snuffling sound woke him up, along with the familiar _tap-tap-tap_ of boney claws on metal.

Wearily, Gaster groaned himself awake, letting out a large yawn into his hands that turned into rubbing at his eye sockets. He stretched his legs out and when he hit the solid underside of his desk, he realised he’d fallen asleep at work. _Again._

It must’ve been straight after leaving his subjects alone together. He’d stuck them in the same bed since really, even he wasn’t so barbaric as to make one of them sleep on the floor. They’d look sort of.. cute snuggled up with each other. Then the scientist had berated himself for anthropomorphizing one of his own test subjects and left the room in a hurry.

Then apparently he’d gone to fill out some paperwork, only to pass out in his office chair.

He couldn’t find it in himself to be too frustrated about sleeping at work, though. It saved him the commute through the busy city centre at the very least.

He stretched out his back to try and pop the kinks out of it while he wondered what had woken him up.

The reason didn’t take long to appear, silhouetted in the doorway in a way that would’ve been impressive, if he wasn’t about the size of a small dog.

“y-urhf ah-whuh?” Subject S called out, his voice muffled by the stuffed toy in his mouth. Gaster vaguely recognised it as one he’d bought from home, some kind of a yellow fish with a large grin embroidered into the soft fleece.

Gaster groaned again and leant forward onto his folded arms. Despite his recent nap, he felt anything but well-rested and it took him a few seconds to recall why.

At the lack of response, S huffed. The child dropped the toy out of his mouth and into his hands, repeating himself.

“you’re awake?”

Gaster unfolded his arms just enough to give S a dismissive wave, “Yes, yes, give me a minute.” He kept his forehead firmly pressed against the cool surface of his desk though.

S took this as an invitation to come closer and didn’t hesitate to trot over to his creator.

He ducked under his arms and plopped himself underneath the desk.

“you ok?” S asked up to him innocently.

The scientist flicked his eyes open and was a bit taken aback to find his subject sitting under the office desk, white pupils like beacons in the dark of it.

“I’m fine.” He managed as he leant back slightly, “Just a bit tired.”

The subject nodded but said no more, examining the fish toy in his clawed hands. After a stretch of silence, he finally tilted his head up at his creator. He didn’t look directly at him, mostly at the man’s shoulder.

“thanks.” The child mumbled.

“For what?” His voice was still hoarse from sleep.

They paused again, picking at the fish’s blue button eyes, “for fixing my soul. don’t hurt no more.”

“Hm.”

"at the start, i think it was uh, pun- nish- punishing. punishment for being bad." White lights met his, flickering slightly, "but you were scared. i felt it."

He was surprised, even though he was too tired to show it but for the slight widening of his eyes. Gaster took a second to look at his subject properly. Before, he’d treated the creature as more of an animal or beast but the more he stared at him now, the more came the uncomfortable realisation that Subject S was more childlike than he’d originally anticipated.

“Where- ” He coughed to clear his throat of the thickness of sleep and then asked “Where’s your brother?”

The scientist grew alarmed as the child’s lower jaw began to tremble and he hunched inwards.

“s’not my bro in there,” They mumbled, “not t.”

Gaster sighed and drew back fully, leaning back in his chair with a hand to his forehead.

“Like I said, my boy, he’s gone on vacation. And while he’s away, I need you to take care of your new brother for me.” He resisted the urge to snap at him, realising that he was pretty over-tired at this point.

“i know but i want - ” And with that he promptly stuffed the toy fish into his mouth, muffling whatever he was going to say next. Then he took the toy out.

"i can help p. until i can get t."

Gaster looked at him incredulously but the subject refused to meet his eyes, tail twitching against the inner walls of the desk. Another sigh and he rolled the chair backwards.

“Come on, subject,” He beckoned, grasping underneath S’s arms and lifting him from the darkness underneath his desk, “I want to make sure you haven’t killed this one too.”

S huffed indignantly and buried his face into Gaster’s shoulder. He had no argument against his status as a brother killer, though.

The scientist startled at the feel of his subject curling in closer, moving backwards but the subject’s claws were pretty well embedded into the shoulder of his lab coat.

“Very well. Just this once.” He grumbled, hefting S up more and wrapping his arm underneath him. It was easier than ripping yet another lab coat after all.

The walk from the office to T’s old bedroom was only a few short steps. So the boy barely had time to appreciate the feeling of being held before he was unceremoniously dropped to the metal floor.

He scrambled onto two feet to look up at Gaster but the scientist was already leaning over Subject P’s sleeping form, clipboard out.

S shrugged off the rough treatment with ease and clambered onto the bed to watch Gaster work.

It was a pretty standard check-up, with Gaster moving P’s limp form into whatever position he wanted since it wasn’t awake yet. There was a moment where the scientist held his hand above the younger subject’s ribcage and S felt a spark of alarm but the most magic the older skeleton could summon was a few pathetic sparks of blue before his soul refused him. No chance of checking up on the young subject's soul today then.

The scientist frowned down at his own hand and muttered under his breath. His other hand was rubbing at his clothed chest as he winced.

“Still not over the operation earlier, then.” He explained at S’s questioning glance.

The meaning of it all went straight over the subject’s head, so he just shrugged and curled up at the end of the bed, soft toy clamped carefully between his jaws. His pupils watched him sleepily.

“he doesn’t look like him.” S declared after a long while of thinking. Gaster raised a brow at him over the edge of his clipboard, pencil paused mid-sentence.

“i meant p.” S clarified after Gaster dismissed it as babble, “p don’t look like t.”

Glancing between the unconscious subject below him and the one perched at the end of the bed, he struggled to see the difference between them, except for size.

“I don’t know,” The scientist grimaced, “You all look the same to me.”

“no but, p has small eyes. and a bigger uh,” He crawled around the edges of P’s blanketed body so he could nudge at his younger brother’s chin with his muzzle, “long bit. eat bit.”

“Ah.” Gaster commented, caught off guard and not entirely sure what to say.

He’d seen so many iterations of what was essentially the same creature come and go that he wasn’t kidding in that they all looked similar. He absently wondered how he was going to tell the difference between S and P when they were the same size. Collars? Metal plates..? That seemed unethical somehow.

Gaster regarded S out the corner of his eye carefully. His eldest creation was getting smarter with each day that passed and at this point, he realised how… _strange_ it was that he’d yet to give him proper clothing.

He’d always viewed his subjects as animals rather than actual monsters and was coming to the uncomfortable realisation that there might be a bit more to the situation than that.

Subject S, at least, had some measure of self-awareness. Subject P was currently comatose from a large dose of sedatives. And after the extended time in incubation, Gaster doubted that P would have anything close to resembling sentience.

Finishing up with deft hands, he drew back and gestured to S that he was finished. He didn’t bother to watch the older one spring forward like he predicted, immediately wandering out of the room in search of something more interesting. Interesting like the vending machine in the main lab.

A small tug on the trailing ends of his lab coat stopped him in his tracks. Instead of monitoring his fellow skeleton, Subject S was blinking up at him with their innocently round eyes. Gaster felt wary.

“p is outta in- inca- bayshion.” S commented with meaning, tail swishing behind them.

“Yes, I’m well aware of that. And?” Gaster steeled himself for another inane question.

“can i go when he wake up?”

His wasn’t quite prepared for that. The scientist’s soul spluttered.

“No.” He replied firmly, his eyes burning holes into S’s own, “You can’t leave the lab. Ever. I mean it.”

“but- but when he wake up you have more friend then! you won’t be lonely. so i can go find t and have a va- vacay- uh. i can go. to t.” They finished resolutely, but the little monster’s expression was wavering in confidence at Gaster’s long silence.

Gaster took a moment to gather his thoughts together, fully prepared to explain the full truth of why T wasn’t _really_ on vacation and why S should quit asking to leave when he _couldn’t._

But under the onslaught of S’s enthusiasm and the weight of magical exhaustion, he really couldn’t muster up the effort. So instead he gave him another curt “No.” and shambled out of the room.

Shoulders slumped, S huffed and grumbled under his breath. None of it was coherent to anyone but himself but after a while of entertaining himself like that, he felt a lot better. He'd have to ask the scientist about it another day, maybe when Gaster's magic felt less rotten.

Glancing around the room until his eyes landed on the yellow thing he did not know the name of, he remembered what he’d originally left the room for and cheerfully scooped up the yellow toy.

He bounced onto the bed, sending P’s sedated body rocking back and forth slightly. S apologised quietly to his brother and presented the toy to him. He tucked it under the blankets, right under the other skeleton’s chin.

“i dunno what it is,” He admittedly quietly, although in the void of the lab his whispers sounded louder than they were, “but i like it. is soft.”

“but don’t chew,” The child warned the other in a grave tone, “you chew? it rip. _it rip, it dead_.”

“so don’t kill thing.” S finished decisively, acting as if P had been awake and nodding along attentively the whole time. His little brother remained as passive as he was before. His black pits for eyes were as vacant as they always were.

The older brother grinned with his sharp, crooked teeth, before jumping down with the grace of a cat. He pulled out his box of storybooks gleefully, pawing through them until he found the ideal tale he wanted to tell.

“don’t worry, bro,” He chattered happily into the suffocating silence of their lab, “i can read the stories 'til you sleep like momma bunny."


	14. Issues Addressed

JOURNAL ENTRY 551:

It feels like I’m being ridiculous again. The basics of psychology and child development are beyond my understanding but I’m almost certain that the ability to feel empathy is a big deal. S actually asked if I felt _better_ the other day. It might have been an imitation thing, since I often have to ask how he’s feeling during his checkups but it feels like this runs deeper than parroting back my words.

So I’ve visited the same discount clothing store as before as well as getting some boxes of old clothes down from the attic. Then I immediately felt like an idiot for not taking measurements beforehand but there was nothing I could do about it at that point. I picked out some stuff, plain clothing and such. I bought a few more soft toys from the attic box while I was there since S seems to have a generous soul that P is suffering.

S has asked me several more times about when he can leave. I don’t know what to say.

 

\---

 

The elevator made a cheerful _ding_ sound as it reached the right floor, much to the dread of its lone passenger. Gaster frowned to himself, hesitating just inside the doors indecisively but as the doors began to slide shut again, he shook it off and stepped out neatly.

He warily noted the new scratches on the elevator call button as he passed it.

He hadn’t even managed three steps before he heard the familiar babbling of his eldest subject echoing around the corner.

“ - this one called f, cause he has really big flaps here. an’ flaps has an _f_ in it. uh, at least, i think it do,” Subject S was explaining patiently. The scientist could feel his face twitching up into a fond smile.

Schooling his features into a more appropriate expression, he pushed the door open to his subject’s shared room with a straight face.

Subject P was still sedated, although for how long Gaster could keep him in that state he had no idea. While the subject itself was sleeping peacefully, the centre of the bed was a pile of shapes and colours, with every single soft toy or interesting object S owned or had found surrounding his little brother. Although there wasn't much to behold, maybe about ten or twelve items at most, the variety alone was something. The scientist even spotted the bright red gas tube from a broken bunsen burner wrapped around the neck of a stuffed bunny like a scarf. There were picture books, stained labcoats and rubber gloves alike.

It was everything that S owned fit on the bed with room to spare. It was a bit disturbing to the scientist, to be honest. He hadn’t realised before how many toys he’d gifted to his subject.

Subject S was holding a few of the soft toys, holding up a blue one in the shape of an elephant and pointing out the floppy ears. The young boy paused with it held aloft, then leant in closer as if sharing a grave secret.

“i think f look sad. he not happy ‘cause he lonely,” S was whispering to his baby brother, “tha’s why f is so-”

Gaster cleared his throat, interrupting whatever the subject was going to say next. Instead of being annoyed, S perked up at the sound of his voice and dashed over to him, slipping off the bed clumsily in his exuberance. A bright yellow rubber glove fell to the floor with a loud  _slap,_  along with a picture book and a ribbon.

“g,” He shrieked. Gaster grimaced at his enthusiasm. Normally S was mellow and calm but he hadn’t been gone for such a long time before. They were probably used to him sleeping in the spare cot down the hallway and being at his beck and call.

“where you go?” S questioned, circling his feet anxiously as he tried to get a closer look at the cardboard box his creator was holding just out of his reach, “what that?”

The older skeleton nearly tripped over the child and ended up nudging him out the way with his foot.

“Move, would you,” He snapped nervously, “I’m trying to put this down somewhere.”

S backed off slightly, but still lingered close enough to get a good view of the mysterious box.

The scientist opened up the flaps of it without fanfare, lifting out a few bundles of fabric. The creature’s eyes lit up at the bright colours.

“blankies?” He asked and Gaster frowned down at him.

“Not quite. They’re called clothes.”

Admittedly, Gaster was tired of watching S run around without proper coverings. At first, when S had the sensibilities of a common dog, it hadn’t mattered. After all, many animals didn’t wear clothes and the creature had seemed more comfortable without cotton getting in the way.

But then he’d made the mistake of seeing it as less of an animal and more of a monster. More of a child. Then the idea having a nude subject running around the lab seemed less natural and more… perverse.

“koves?” S cocked their head, already reaching their hands up to grasp at the striped fabric.

“ _Clothes_.” Gaster corrected, sounding out the word slowly like a teacher would, “And yes, they are for you. So put them on while I take a look at your brother.”

“okay,” S replied contentedly, unfolding them into a messy pile. He grabbed one piece of the pile and then -

He was confused. He tilted his head to look up at the scientist but Gaster had already turned away, leaning over P as he examined an empty eye socket carefully.

The little monster squinted at Gaster’s clothes, trying to reconcile the idea of a shirt on the scientist with a shirt on himself. Not that he knew it was a shirt. He flipped it around until he found a hole. He tried to put his head in the hole but it was much too small - all he managed to do was get the small end of his muzzle through but after that point it was too tight a fit. Pulling hard to dislodge his face from the fabric, he fumbled around with the clothes until he found a hole big enough and tried again.

Only to get the same result. He gave a shout of frustration and tugged on the cloth, only to find it stuck on his head with his vision uncomfortably obstructed. The young subject pawed at his own head, grasping at the shirt and ripping it in his panic. He called out for his creator loudly.

“g! g, help!” S cried out, swaying so much that he fell onto his rear. Gaster turned around at the sound of the commotion, not expecting his subject to be having trouble putting on a _shirt_ of all things.

He sighed, putting aside the instruments he’d been using to measure his unconscious subject. The scientist placed his attention on his much more dynamic subject, although with the way they were struggling, probably a bit too dynamic.

“help..?” S whinged pitifully, their arms flapping wildly. Until he heard Gaster’s snorting laughter. It was a nice sound so he flapped his arms more, wondering if the older monster was laughing at him.

A pause, then the source of the snickering scooped S into the air and onto the bed with a soft thumping noise, making the mattress bounce softly. Gaster deftly untangled his eldest from the mess of fabric, watching his flustered head pop out with something akin to relief.

“I can’t believe you’re struggling to put on clothes of all things,” He teased, quite maliciously, “It’s really not that hard.”

S huffed, crossing his arms and sulking.

“is hard,” He argued, but unfolded his arms with Gaster’s insistent prodding and held them straight up in the air.

The shirt still struggled to fit over his head though, and after a minute of furious yanking, it went over his muzzle but wouldn’t fit over his ribcage. Gaster groaned with annoyance.

“Too small,” He grumbled, chucking it onto the bed beside S and digging around in the cardboard box. S picked up the striped fabric eagerly and traced the edges of the lines, blue and green.

His careful exploration was interrupted however, when his vision went again as Gaster pulled a new shirt over his head. This one fit much better and S couldn’t help but grin when the scientist stepped back.

The child held up his fabric-clad arms and said, “i’m like you now!”

Gaster made that same snorting-laughter again and held up the next garment, “Unlikely. I can actually dress myself without help, for one.”

The shorts went on without too much fuss, S shuffling off the bed and into the waist of them. The older skeleton took a moment to take a nearby scalpel to slice a hole in the shorts to slip the subject's tail through so the elastic waist sat at a more decent height. Then came the socks, unbelievably small and at first S tried to put them on as mittens. At the end of it, Gaster stood back fully and examined his subject, who held out his arms and grinned up at him triumphantly.

S actually looked like a real monster now, which was strange to say the least. If he really felt the desire to, he could take his creation’s hand right now and walk around the city centre with them and no one would blink twice.

He had to suppress the vague feeling of accomplishment so he could level his gaze on the little monster.

“I think that’s enough fussing and messing about for today,” He said curtly, snapping his fingers and shooing S out of the way, “Let me finish the last of this examination and then we’ll see about that bone marrow extraction later on, hm?”

S frowned up at him, obviously remember how painful the last marrow extraction had been and rubbing his arm for it. Still, he looked down and looked at his socked feet with glee - now he wouldn’t get cold when he went outside!

He considered pestering Gaster a little more on being let outside but figured he should leave it for today, lest he encouraged his creator to make the operation later on more painful.

Instead he climbed back onto the bed, mindful of the scientist, so he could peek inside the box.

He grinned when he found another plush toy awaiting him.

Today was a very good day, the subject thought to themselves, real monster clothes _and_ a new toy? It must be one of those _birthday_ things like in his storybooks.


	15. Problem Solving

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was listening to _Talking Heads - This Must Be The Place_ for most of this.  
>  Dunno what that says about me.

(Reformatting Note: this part was a note written at the bottom of JE-551 and not a separate entry)

I’ll have to talk to him about messing with the elevator. I’ve just gotten an email from the administration staff asking if they can examine the elevator’s panel in my private lab since it’s been calling it near constantly.

 

\---

 

“Subject?”

S looked up instantly, pausing in his attempt to get a sock onto his foot after it had slipped off accidentally. He was sitting on the edge of the shared bed with his feet hanging over the edge so it was easy to kick his feet at Gaster in frustration.

“help?” S called out, and the scientist stepped inside with a long suffering sigh.

“Manners.” He chided him lightly.

“please? help?” S replied easily, having no qualms with saying what the monster wanted as long as it got the sock back on his foot.

“Better,” Gaster fixed his sock easily, taking care not to touch bare bone together. The scientist took a moment to examine his test subject’s digitigrade legs; the long misshapen ‘toes’ were probably the reason why the child was having so much trouble with clothes, especially socks. He’d had to buy shorts for them simply because he doubted that long trousers would fit over the boy’s knees.

He’d have to teach the subject how to reform his legs into plantigrade legs if he was going to find clothes longer than shorts. He had no doubt that teaching a child how to do that was going to be a difficult task, even if he knew for certain that Subject S had the same abilities he did.

That’s what he got for mixing so many animal and monster genes together, he supposed. It had produced some highly interesting results at the very least - Subject G had actually had a small set of antlers for a brief time before the DT soak had melted their bones into a horrid screeching puddle that he’d executed out of mercy.

Gaster took a deep breath, shoving the memories of failed experiments deep in his mind with all the other things he didn’t want to remember. Not out of horror, more to avoid the disappointment of failure.

Then he took a moment to recall why he had decided to give S a visit and then the air seemed to shift. The room got colder when the scientist gave the subject a grim look.

S shrunk back and wondered if he’d done something wrong in the past few moments.

“You’ve been messing with the elevator buttons again, haven’t you?” Gaster spoke sternly and the child averted their eyes.

“no?” They lied hesitantly. The scientist’s frown only deepened.

“Don’t lie to me, boy. I know you’ve been curious because the whole panel is covered in scratches. And there’s only two creatures around here that have claws- ”

“jus’ wanna go outside. want a vacation.” S interrupted petulantly, folding his shaking claws over each other. He mispronounced ‘vacation’ badly but Gaster still understood what he meant, much to his distaste. The older skeleton crouched down in front of the younger, mindful of his slowly swinging feet hanging off the edge of the bed.

“You can’t keeping doing this. Just let Subject T go.” He spoke through gritted teeth, tone half-pleading with the boy. Clearly this was a subject that had been brought up more often than Gaster would’ve liked, judging by his exasperation.

The subject shook their head furiously and huffed to themselves, “no. gonna find t and a mom and- and a family.”

Gaster groaned and rolled his eyes upwards, “Now you’re being ridiculous. You can’t leave without my assistance and trust me, that will not be happening anytime soon.” He gave the boy a stern glare.

“but buttons make it go. i watched you press buttons and you leave,” S grumbled out in confusion. He squinted up at Gaster as if it was his fault the elevator wouldn’t respond to him. He supposed that technically, it was his fault.

“You need a keycard to open the doors so would you just leave the panel _ alone.  _ You can’t open the doors. End of.”

“chee- card?” S mimicked, the frustration appearing to bleed out of him as he blinked up at the scientist.

“Never you mind,” Gaster said dismissively, already regretting his choice of words.

“ _ chee- _ card?” S insisted.

“Drop it.” He snapped.

The subject slumped underneath the scowl that was directed at him. A silence stretched between them before Gaster gave up and sighed, pressing fingers to eye sockets.

He cleared his throat, annoyed when S didn’t perk up at attention like usual. Fine then, if the boy wanted to sulk then he had every right to. He frowned and stood up to his full height.

“No more trying to escape, you hear?” Gaster spoke with a sense of finality, looming over the subject’s ducked head until he gave him a reluctant nod. The older skeleton nodded to himself, satisfied.

“Now where are those problem sheets I gave you?”

S hesitated, not feeling very inclined to move on his creator’s behalf after the scolding he’d just received. But Gaster repeated his name threateningly, he pushed himself into motion to fetch the scattered sheets of paper.

He jumped off the bed and dug around in his box of storybooks, retrieving them easily and holding up the slightly crumped paper up to the scientist. He didn’t meet his gaze.

Not that it mattered anyway, since Gaster wasn’t even looking at the boy.

“Hmm,” Gaster hummed thoughtfully, “You’ve gotten question three wrong, as well as five and six.” He flipped the page over and scanned the next one, “Ten, eleven, fifteen- ”

S scowled as the monster continued to list numbers off easily. In all fairness, he’d managed to get the majority of the maths problems right. It wasn’t his fault that he didn’t quite understand this whole subtraction and multiplication business and he kept  _ running out of fingers _ .

His creator was refusing to help him with it and the frustration built up so much that he couldn’t even finish it.

Gaster laughed, but it wasn’t a kind laugh. He held the last page up in front of the subject.

“You didn’t even finish the last page. Instead you drew a- ” The older skeleton held it up to his face so he could squint at it, “Is that a tree?”

“bunny,” S supplied quietly and under his breath. His tail twitched restlessly.

“Ah right.” Gaster nodded, “It still isn’t mathematics though, is it?”

He handed the sheet back to S, who took it listlessly.

Seeing how disheartened his subject was managed to bug him slightly so he tried for a soothing tone of voice. He figured that he’d talked down to his eldest enough for one day.

“It was a good attempt, my boy, but you need to try harder if you’re going to be working with me.” He said softly.

S seemed to relax after that and Gaster got the feeling that he’d try harder next time. Despite himself, the older monster felt a fraction of guilt for ripping into his subject so brutally but he supposed that’s what they deserved for scratching up the walls in their efforts to escape.

In an attempt to sooth his guilty soul and S, he reached out and gave S a quick pat on the head. As if petting a dog.

The subject looked up at him in confusion, but after a moment of hesitation, their face grew soft and they leant into Gaster. The sheet of paper fluttered to the ground, dropped when S wrapped his arms around Gaster’s legs.

“Um.” Gaster said intelligently, frowning down at his creation with confusion of his own. S only rested his head on a leg and gazed up at the older skeleton with an unreadable expression.

Then as quickly as it occurred, S let go and was scooping up the problem sheets from the floor. The child looked up at him with hope in their gaze.

“help? can you explain please?” They questioned, not for the first time, and held up the stack of papers.

Gaster let out a breath slowly, trying to shake off the uncomfortable feeling of S’s soul radiating so much affection so close to his own. It felt like his own battered soul was melting.

“Yes, alright.” He muttered, reaching for the maths questions, “I think I can manage that.”

 

\---------

  
  


JOURNAL ENTRY 552:

In hindsight, I think I’ve been a bit harsh on Subject S. When it comes to the problem sheets, at least. In the past, S has been capable of teaching themselves concepts in a matter of hours if they press themselves into it with enthusiasm. Unfortunately, they’ve become less enthusiastic as of late, probably due to their new roommate. The boy seems to be very interested in teaching his brother everything that he’s learnt, despite Subject P’s lack of consciousness.

Despite the obvious distraction the younger subject is causing to S, I’m reluctant to separate them. True happiness is difficult to find in this miserable pit and even I’m not enough of a monster to destroy it heartlessly.

 

\---

 

He doesn’t know why he’s awake but he knows there’s a reason, an instinct that dragged him from his restless dreaming and into a queasy sort of half-sleep.

His eyes flickered and at first the shape was indistinct from the rest of the lab’s spare room, cluttered as it was.

Until the head of the shape shifted and the light spilling from the hallway glinted across a jagged, toothy grin.

“ _ chee..? _ ” It breathed, a light pressure on his abdomen almost enough to stop his soul completely.

It edged closer, claws digging in between his ribs uncomfortably despite the barrier of clothing. Jaws unhinged and in his half-dreaming state he imagined them dripping with saliva and coated with a thick paste of dust. The head edged closer, teeth over the delicate bones of his spine, about to bite down. It lunges and -

Buried itself into his shoulder, sobbing. Instantly, the heavy shroud of sleep was gone from Gaster’s mind and he flinched away from the contact.

He cleared his throat with difficulty but the young skeleton didn’t stop crying. Gaster felt his shirt growing uncomfortably damp and frowned at the ceiling, trying to ignore the feeling.

While S was taking the time and effort to soak his work shirt through, the scientist took the time to fumble with the stack of boxes at the side of the spare bed. His fingers skated over miscellaneous plastic bits and bobs until he found the switch and the cheap lamp flicked on, lighting up the room.

The subject stopped crying at that, his breath slowing down to hiccups and low whines as he pulled his head from the older skeleton’s shoulder to look around the now-lit room.

The light softened the child’s features and suddenly Gaster felt the tiniest bit ridiculous. Scared of a monster as small as this.

S turned his head to meet Gaster’s curious gaze and suddenly felt embarrassed. He made another long, crying noise went to bury his head back in the damp spot.

Only to be stopped by the scientist’s hand on his forehead.

“Not again, please.” Gaster spoke with exasperation but his overall tone was warm, “I’m afraid I don’t have any spare shirts in the office after this one.”

The boy giggled slightly, but his eyes were still watery so the scientist pushed him backwards. Mindful of the older skeleton’s ribcage, he shuffled back so his creator could move into a sitting position. S moved into his lap before he could protest, bouncing until he was comfortable.

“Now  _ why, _ may I ask, are you bothering me at- ,” He paused to tilted his wristwatch in the direction of the light and his brows shot up, “ _ five in the morning?” _

S hunched over nervously, looking like he was about to start up a racket again just at the thought of it. Gaster waited patiently.

His patience was rewarded with S’s soft mumbling.

“bad dream.” They spoke around the tail in their mouth, “i had a bad dream and the dark is scary.”

Gaster sighed noisily and rubbed at his tired eye sockets. He replied, voice equally as soft as if the early hour was no place for shouting, “So why did you come to me, then? Did you think my presence would really make you feel better?”

To his surprise, the subject nodded readily.

“yeah. you save me from bad dreams.”

Gaster pulled his hands away from his face to stare at his creation in disbelief. S met his gaze without faltering and pulled his tail from his teeth.

“monsters can’t kill us ‘cause you don’t want us dead,” S explained it as if it was as obvious as the sky was blue. Not that he would know that the sky was blue.

“Us?” Gaster asked absently, still trying to process the child’s unwavering faith in him. Maybe it was because of his diligence when attending to Subject P? But that was only logical since after all, he didn’t want P dying as well.

“me an’ p.” S replied, tapping his claws against each other. He then turned on Gaster with an unnaturally critical eye, “when’s p waking up?”

“I’m sorry?”

“when you gonna wake p up?” The subject repeated, eyes scanning him for any hint of a lie. It made the scientist a little bit uncomfortable to be under the little monster’s scrutiny.

But since this night (morning?) had proved to be a serious of uncomfortable events, he shrugged it off with ease, “I don’t know when Subject P is going to wake up.”

Liar. If he didn’t give P another dose of sedatives this morning then the second subject would be awake by lunchtime.

“can you pro- muh- isse?” S tried instead, “pro- miss?”

“What?”

“can you  _ promise  _ that my bro is gonna wake up?” He insisted, leaning forward to press his small hands against Gaster’s ribcage. He winced under the pressure but didn’t let his expression show it.

“Hmm, sure.” The older skeleton agreed, grabbing at S’s wrists and pushing them away. He didn’t say  _ when _ P was going to wake up after all.

“say it?”

Gaster rolled his eyes, “I  _ promise _ . Now if you’re finished, could you please leave me be? I want to try for at least a few more hours sleep.”

Gaster felt alarm spark inside of his chest as S’s eyes started to water and they began to hiccup. He clamped his hand solidly around their muzzle in an attempt to stop them from bawling again.

“What do I have to do to stop you from doing that?” The scientist said in a hurry. S pulled their muzzle free from his clasped hand.

“lemme sleep here,” They demanded, sending nervous looks at the long hallway. After a good twenty minutes without movement, the lights had shut off automatically as a way to save energy. The older monster imagined that the black pit of the corridor must look mighty terrifying to someone so young.

Gaster looked straight into S’s watering eyes and sighed, “Fine then.”

The subject cheered quietly and struggled under the blankets before Gaster could protest, nudging the older man with his feet until he moved over to make space.

After the child was situated comfortably, he gazed up at the scientist’s bewildered look and simply said, “lights.”

Giving it up as a bad job, the scientist huffed in frustration and leant over to turn off the bedside lamp. The room was plunged into darkness and S stiffened but Gaster gave him a pat in the vague area of his head.

“Don’t wake me up again,” He warned his subject, before rolling over to go to sleep.

One thing bothered him though, and after a minute or two of listening to S’s breathing even out, he couldn’t help but ask.

“Aren’t you -” His voice sounded impossibly loud in the quiet of the lab, so loud that he stopped in the shock of it. S made an inquisitive noise.

“Aren’t you worried that the monsters will get your brother?” He asked, a last ditch effort at getting S to leave the room. He felt more than heard it when the subject beside him shook his head.

“nope, cause monsters only get you when you awake.” The young child whispered.

“Hmm.”

They were both silent for a long time.

“experiments only hurt when you awake.” Subject S commented quietly, more wondering out-loud than condemning his creator.

His only answer from the man was a loud snore.


	16. Drug Abuse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title is a pun because i don't think i've overused the words 'sedative' and 'drug' so much in my life. and i doubt this is how _any_ of this works but uuhhhhh  
>  also we've hit 200 kudos while i wasn't watching holy shit :O

JOURNAL ENTRY 553:

Note to future self: Never sleep in the same bed as Subject S. He drools and kicks and I fear this shirt is creased beyond all hope of an iron. It’s a shame really; I quite liked this shirt.

Subject S seems to be more amenable to my suggestions this morning. At least we’re learning how to co-exist without snapping at each other now. Not that we don’t still argue at times but I like to think that it’s more friendly bickering than screaming for the sake of it like before.

Additional note: Check the door lock on the spare room. I could’ve sworn I’d locked it and I dread the thought of S getting into places he shouldn’t be.

 

\---

 

“I really wish you’d stop doing this.” Gaster sighed. S blinked up at him innocently.

“don't want him to _starve_ ,” The young monster said through a mouth of popato chisps, spraying bits everywhere as he shrugged his shoulders indifferently.

After waking up with S sitting on his ribs at ten in the morning, staring down at him with a wide grin unsuited for the little sleep they had both managed to get, Gaster felt a bit softer towards the younger skeleton. Probably because he could recall doing the same thing to his own parents at that age, coming in after a nightmare and prodding them in the face in the morning.

Not that he was S’s parent. He felt sick at the thought of it.

But in the month or so since that night, there had been at least six more occasions where S had come into the spare room, despite the scolding the scientist had given him each morning afterwards. It was fortunate that he didn’t sleep at the lab more than twice a week. And that skeletons generally didn’t need much rest as the minor level monsters that they were.

On a few mornings after some of the more traumatising experiments, he’d found S sleeping in his bed. For a moment, the boy had almost looked -

Gaster shook his head. He was overthinking it again.

The scientist sighed again, before wiping the crumbs off Subject P’s face with his hand and scooping the shards of chisps off the surface of the bed. Fortunately for P, skeletons could only swallow food if they concentrated. Since they were the furthest thing from focused right now, it had saved them from choking in their sleep. Instead, the food debris slipped through the gaps in the sleeping subject’s jaw.

Dusting off his hands into the bin to clean them off, he couldn’t find it in himself to be angry. Irritable about the mess maybe, but with every childlike action his creation performed, Gaster was reminded of himself at that age. Recalling how much of a nosy pest he had been at that size was embarrassingly easy so he could handle S’s innocent curiosity and boundary testing.

After all, there was no real risk to P’s health.

However, he did clear his throat meaningfully and give S a pointed look. The scientist raised his brows and held his hand out, palm up.

The young boy rolled their eyes but deposited a popato chisp into the older skeleton’s waiting hand.

Gaster knew he should say his please and thank yous; he was trying to teach the subject manners after all but originally those had been _his_ chisps. S was getting too sly for his own good, he thought irritably.

His thoughts were interrupted however, by the overly cheerful chime of his pager. The noise was so out of place that S, who was about to pop another bit of popato into his mouth, ended up dropping it out of shock. It landed on the floor and the subject gazed over the edge of the bed with such a look of sadness that Gaster couldn’t help but snort.

He brought his pager out of his pocket - despite being the Royal Scientist and therefore, head of all science departments, he very rarely had the thing turned on. Infact the only reason it was on right now was because he’d used it to send a request to the lab techs for more sedatives.

Of course, he didn’t need to give a reason for why he needed so much of a drug unrelated to his specific field. Benefits of being the Royal Scientist, after all.

The scientist soon stopped laughing when he read the message though. Pressing a hand to his forehead, he groaned in annoyance. The subject looked up and tilted his head at him curiously.

“headache?” They asked but Gaster shook his head.

“No, I don’t have a headache,” He glanced down at the pager with poorly veiled disgust, “But I will do after I’ve finished with this lot.”

S didn’t know what to say to that so he just popped another chisp in his mouth. After a moment of thought, he dug around the foil bag a bit and offered up another one to his creator, as if in sympathy.

Said creator took the offering gracefully, the chisp was less gracefully gone in the blink of an eye, “Thank you, my boy.”

Rubbing at his temples, he sent a resigned look at his subject and started gathering up his coat and bag. He slipped his private journal into the large side pocket of his lab coat and double checked that his keycard was still clipped to his lapel.

“Try not to trash the place while I’m gone, would you?” Despite his patronising tone, the scientist was watching S carefully incase they were against being left alone. He didn’t mind skipping yet another department meeting (which he periodically skipped anyway), so the young monster wouldn’t try to follow him or mess around with the equipment.

Despite his worries, S snorted and nodded cheekily. Gaster let out a breath in relief and turned to the door.

“g?” S called out and the scientist looked over his shoulder.

“Yes, subject?” He asked impatiently.

The subject shook the empty foil bag at him and asked loudly, “can you get another bag when you back?”

Gaster huffed in amusement. The absolute _nerve_ of this child.

 

\---------

 

JOURNAL ENTRY 564:

The absolute _nerve_ of some people. They called me up to the conference hall of all places and sat me down like a misbehaving child! And then they had the guts to _treat me like one._

They want to know about the sedatives since one of the technicians had ratted me out. The lab tech from before that I got advice about S teething from, the triceratops-looking girl, she’d gotten concerned when I was taking so much from her stock. And the only reason they made a fuss about it was because someone called _Fiona_ from the biology department is doing some godawful experiment concerning sedating large beasts and they needed gallons of the drug. Which is currently inhabiting the bone marrow of Subject P.

So the head of the biology department called me up there for a meeting. Avis is a decent monster and I’ve known them for years. So of course, when they start asking questions relating to my health, I’m suspicious. After all, department head or not they’re _still_ under my jurisdiction. Avis thought I’d started experimenting on my own soul again.

Isn’t that laughable. I’ve never used sedatives when operating on myself before and I have no intention of using them now. They’d only affect my concentration and accuracy. And besides, I’ve had no choice but to stop the self-experimentation after they saw fit to ban me from taking painkillers from the stock.

I convinced them I was using them to sleep. After providing the biologists with a selection of DT infused bone marrow, they assumed the worst, that it was my own marrow and called me up for a lecture on self-love or something equally as dull. So I’ve assured them that I was using the sedatives as a sleep aid and _yes, of course Avis, I’ll cut down on my usage_.

Bunch of bloody idiots.

 

(Reformatting Note: i took out all the swear words to make it a little more PG since this was ridiculous. if this guy’s potty mouth is key to your ' _investigation_ ' though then i’d be happy to send you the full two page shrine to the f-word. it's actually kinda impressive.)

 

\---

 

By the time the elevator shuddered to a halt on the correct floor, the older skeleton had calmed down. Well, mostly calmed down.

The elevator doors slid open obediently, as if sensing his thin patience and Gaster shut his private journal with a noisy sigh, hiding away the messy scrawl of written wingdings. He’d been so wound up by that trainwreck of a meeting that he’d found himself ranting about it in his journal not even ten minutes later. His continuous repetition of swearing and complaining had made the wait in the lift ever so much shorter.

Stepping out smartly, the scientist couldn’t find it in himself to idle about. He needed to check his current supplies. After all, he needed to calculate exactly how long he could keep Subject P under sedation before he would have to look into less ...savory methods of getting the drug.

There were places in the back end of the capitol that would sell the most _interesting_ things, if you knew where to look.

Of course, Gaster had his doubts about the quality of such drugs.

A sleepy snuffling sound interrupted his thoughts as he passed by his subject’s room. With a spark of frustration, he realised he’d been interrupted mid-examination of Subject P. Sighing wearily, he pushed open the door and was amused to find his eldest fast asleep on top of his younger brother.

The majority of his amusement came from the fact that S had the empty popato chisp packet stuck on the end of his muzzle. By the look of the situation, he had dozed off while sniffing out the last of the crumbs from the inside.

Not wanting to wake up the sleeping child, Gaster stood in the doorway for a moment and just… watched them. Not for any real purpose or ulterior motive, but just because he could.

The first issue with the restriction of the sedatives was with Subject P, who hadn’t moved once since the first night out of the tubes. But the scientist was certain that if he rationed his supplies just right, then he could keep them under for at least a few more weeks.

Then there was the second issue. Subject S. His longest living creation and currently the only real success out of this project, even if he was useless for his original purpose. But the boy was still useful for the testing of serums and procedures that were far from being ethical to use on the general public.

If Gaster was going to keep experimenting on the subject _and_ keep P manageable, then he would have to cut down on the use of sedatives.

When S was an animal, it was fine in the scientist’s mind. It had no comprehension of what was happening to it and in the cases of testing serums, it was preferable to using it on a living monster.

Then they started mimicking him, which had been odd but manageable. After all, the echo flowers of Waterfall were famous among monsters, not to mention things such as the whispering frogs and talking trees along the waterline of the east lake. Speech was not a sign of deep intelligence for monsters.

Then the begging started. And the caring for other creatures and the comprehension of written language. He was even dressing it in _clothes_ now for godsake.

Now, Gaster had an awkward choice to make. Perform operations on S without sedatives while keeping P unconcious. Or halving the time P was spent sedated while keeping the precious drug for the more violent procedures, such as vivisections and intrusive examinations, which still left S in pain but slightly _less_.

Both options limited the progress he could make and the scientist loathed the idea of dying when he was so close to fixing this issue.

Or he could continue forward with the operations as planned. But he’d have to wake up Subject P from his convenient medicated coma.

He dreaded the thought; S was bad enough but imagine _two_ of the little buggers running wild.

The scientist huffed in amusement and plucked the end of the foil bag from the end of his creation’s face, scrunching it up and tossing it onto the trolley near the bed.

The crinkling of foil was loud enough to bother Subject S, who whined in his sleep and flicked an eye open.

Focusing his hazy white pupil on Gaster, he let out a huff and looked the scientist up and down. He stared at the older skeleton’s empty hands and then blinked up at him.

Gaster raised a brow at him while S smiled hopefully.

“didja bring more food?” The subject asked, his jaw stretching into a grin.

The scientist tried to imagine the soft face below him mid-procedure. Bleeding out marrow into a machine while screaming out his pain into a muzzle. Twitching limbs and flickering pupils. Just like he had done at the very beginning.

Gaster snorted uneasily, “No, my boy, I didn’t.”

" _awww,_ " S whined petulantly, shooting his creator an unimpressed look.

Option three it was then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *tags Papyrus*  
> *Papyrus doesn't turn up until Chapter 17*
> 
> uhhhhhh


	17. Wakey Wakey

JOURNAL ENTRY 565:

Due to a change in circumstances, I've decided to awaken Subject P from his medicated coma. Much to my dismay. I can’t say I ever wanted the other subject to awaken at all because honestly, Subject S is enough trouble as it is. I’m cringing at the thought of having  _ double _ the amount of him running around the lab. I had the thought of crippling P on purpose, just breaking his legs or maybe just removing a joint or two so they can’t move around but I’m reluctant to damage a future vessel. Any damage to P is at a risk of being permanent, which is why I’m reducing the amount of serum I’m giving to the vessel. Farming DT from their marrow is a nice enterprise but I’m  worried about the long-term effects of the subject’s DT soaked marrow on their bone density and strength.

I’ll just have to keep Subject P as a control while S bears the brunt of it, unfortunately.

 

\---

 

An insistent tugging on his trouser leg interrupted his concentration. He ignored it and refocused his attention on the task at hand..

Another pull at his leg and Gaster drew back with a sigh, removing his hands from Subject P’s tiny ribcage. He frowned down at his oldest creation.

“What is it now?”

Subject S sat back on his haunches and blinked up at the scientist, head tilted curiously. They seemed to be having an “all-fours day” today, a term that Gaster had coined to describe whenever S spent most of the day in a quadrupedal stance. Although the child had the option between standing up-right and tottering around on four limbs from the structure of his body, balancing on two feet was considered taxing to them.. 

So when he was feeling particularly lazy, as S often was, he’d shift into the more comfortable form similar to an animal. The scientist was trying to train him out of the habit but progress was slow on that front.

As if in response to Gaster’s thoughts, S yipped, excited and animal-like.

“he awake yet?” He pestered the other monster and from the older skeleton’s long-suffering sigh, it wasn’t the first time he had asked.

“No, not yet.” Gaster turned around and returned to his work, plunging his fingers back into the smaller subject’s ribcage without a second thought, “Trust me, my boy. You’ll know when he’s awake.”

“why’s that?” The creature asked him, his attention more focused batting at his tail in front of him than whatever the scientist was messing about with. The last time he’d interrupted Gaster mid-science-thing it hadn’t ended well.

“Because I say so.” He huffed, struggling with a set of pliers to remove some stray chips of bone.

Gaster shuffled back and forth, picking up bits off the metal trolley beside the bed and the putting them back. He kept looking between his hands and the monitor beside the bed that was displaying Subject P’s vitals. S kept swiping at his tail; the details of whatever the other was doing were beyond his understanding.

The work was slow going but about half an hour later, Gaster was stepping back from P’s bedside and swiping at his forehead. He wiped his hands off with a nearby cloth and met S’s hopeful gaze easily.

“Right then. I think that should be it then.” He tossed the red-spotted cloth onto the bedside table, along with several clamps and a now empty syringe.

“he’s awake?” S cheered, going to leap onto the bed but grabbed by the scruff of his neck at last minute. He started to make a fuss but Gaster just put an arm underneath him, holding him to his shoulder.

“No, no.” Gaster explained, moving the boy so he could get a good look at his younger brother no longer buried by IO tubes, clamps and wires, “The sedative was powerful. It might be an hour or two before he gains consciousness. Luckily he’s one of us- if he was a bit more fleshy, it might have taken days.” 

S leaned in closer, reaching out an arm to pat P on his uncovered forearm.

“hi,” He giggled, the excitement of being only hours from seeing his brother awake starting to set in. Gaster snorted and dropped his subject to the ground after he was tired of S’s wriggling around.

“I’ll be in the other room,” The scientist said with emphasis, giving the subject a meaningful look, “I’ll just be making tea so it’ll just be a moment but come find me if anything - ”

His pager chimed annoyingly. Gaster had to resist the urge to swear profusely - during the meeting just last week, there had been complaints about the Royal Scientist ‘never having his bloody pager on.’ In Gaster’s defense, the pager was nothing but irritating and he saw nothing amusing in receiving an excessive amount of messages about the business of his co-workers.

He still checked it anyway since he’d made a promise to Avis to stop being so unreachable in exchange for an extra bit of sedative. His frustration only grew with every word he read: it was an emergency on the third floor down in the physics department and as they had messed up a very  _ specific _ kind of magic, they needed Gaster and his own brand of  _ specific _ magic.

“what’s that?” S interrupted his irritable thoughts, teeth nibbling at the end of his tail again so the question had come out slightly muffled.

“A bunch of idiots,” The scientist huffed, picking up bits of equipment from around the room as he went. He paced around the room in a whirlwind of motion, snatching up his coat and I.D. badge as he went. S watched him with amusement.

The skeleton paused a moment to wag a finger at his creation and warned him, “Don’t jump on the bed. He won’t wake up before I’m back so don’t do anything. Don’t touch him. Just- just stay there. Uh. Don’t move.”

S grinned up at him and Gaster cocked an eyebrow. The subject grinned even wider but nodded all the same so Gaster ducked out of the door in a rush, coat slung over his shoulder.

“And definitely don’t kill this one either!” Gaster’s voice echoed down the corridor faintly and S frowned.

Silence reigned for a while and the older child felt awkwardness pressing down on him.

“don’t worry. i won’t kill you, bro.” He explained to sooth P’s fears, as if his brother was awake and staring down at him from the edge of the bed.

He couldn’t really see his baby brother from this vantage point but he was reluctant to leap on the bed. Gaster could always tell for some reason - usually from the wrinkled sheets in the shape of S’s curled up bones but S didn’t realise that.

So despite how he’d started out the day, the subject found himself shifting into a bipedal stance so he could peek over the edge of the cot. P looked so  _ different _ without an oxygen mask covering his fragile jaw…

But eventually, even a close examination of his younger brother wasn’t enough to entertain him so he wandered off in search of his box of storybooks. He could vaguely remember dragging the box into the spare bedroom and pestering his creator to read him a bedtime story after the monster had broken the news that P would be joining them in the waking world.

Surprisingly enough, Gaster had taken to reading a bedtime story with good grace and did a decent enough job of sending S to sleep through the pure monotony of his voice.

Half an hour passed agonisingly slowly, Subject S flicking lazily through a picture book on the edge of the two subject’s shared room. He had looked up at P the once or twice out of curiosity but the younger skeleton hadn’t been doing anything interesting so he’d gone back to his reading. After all, the scientist had said it would be a few hours until P woke up for real.

He’d already read this book about fifteen times though and he wasn’t feeling up to a sixteenth time. He considered pacing by the elevator waiting for Gaster to return when he heard a terrible noise.

It was sort of like a whine that ended with a gurgle.

S startled and dropped his picture book to the floor, shuffling back against the wall of the room.

There was another noise, this one like a heaving cough. Then a long whiny sound of complaint.

The older subject tilted their head and to their fear, realised it was coming from the bed. A wave of anxiety washed over them - what if P was dying? Gaster said that he wasn’t waking up for a long time and despite how excited S was to meet his new sibling, he didn’t expect to meet them yet and if P died then Gaster would blame him again -

A chirping noise and after an uncomfortably long wait, S responded with a noise of their own.

Setting his book aside, S crept closer, tension in the lines of his bones and the droop of his tail. It was one thing to mess about with an unconscious sibling - all this time, the older brother had been playing a game of pretend but with each very  _ real _ squeaky noise P made, the uncomfortable reality was sinking in. A doll for a brother was fun to play with and read stories to but this creature was  _ alive _ and  _ squirmy _ and what if he hurt him..?

A murmuring sound drifted from the bed as if S hadn’t said anything at all and there was the soft shuffling noise of shifting cotton blankets.

Reaching his baby brother’s bedside, the subject balanced on two hind legs and peered over the edge curiously.

Black pits for eyes stared back at him with a blank stare and S recoiled slightly. He and Gaster had always had white pupils set inside their eyes but for some reason, P didn’t have those. It was a tad unnerving.

It was easily shrugged off though as S felt the pure wonder settling into his chest. He carefully reached out a shaky hand and patted P on the arm. P clicked their jaw in response and snapped it open and closed a few times. The older brother wasn’t worried; baby skeletons had trouble keeping their lower jaw in place and it was similar enough to babbling. He saw the younger subject’s hand twitching but from the looks of it, they didn’t have the strength to move around much but their head.

He moved back slightly, ducking back down to fetch his book.

The reaction was instantaneous.

P started crying out. S flinched back at the volume.

He popped his head back up, giving his younger brother an incredulous look.

“i’m right here. shush.” S huffed, flinging his arm out again to pat P on the shoulder. The younger brother quieted down to sniffles and mumbles, eyes watering alarmingly.

The older subject watched the other warily, searching for a sign that they were going to start up a racket again. After a few beats of nothing but a wobbling lower jaw, S figured it was safe and ducked away again.

As soon as S was out of his sight, the baby monster started screeching again and S bit down the urge to start screaming back at them. How could something so small be so  _ loud? _

He hurriedly snatched up his picture book in his mouth and lept onto the bed. It only took a few seconds but the noise P made in that time bounced around in his skull and made it feel like jelly. He stumbled over P’s blanketed form and P let out an annoyed squawking noise.

“shush!” S exclaimed, voice muffled with the book in between his teeth. He put a hand over P’s mouth like Gaster often did on the rare occasions when S was a noisy baby. Of course, the older skeleton had had to stop after S learnt how to bite but it had worked for a brief period of time.

P made a quiet noise of complaint, flinging his head left and right in an attempt to dislodge the hand. Failing that, the baby fell back on the only thing he knew how to do - which was scream.

“ _ AAAAAHHHHHHHH - ” _

“no!” S scolded him, letting the book go so he could put another hand over P’s mouth and press down more. “shut up! shush! you’re too noisy.”

His little brother didn’t like that either and only increased his volume. The sound was leaking out between S’s bony fingers so he removed them and put a thick blanket on P’s head, pressing down to muffle him.

With the addition of a blanket, the baby quieted down to loud whimpers and whines. S let out a breath of relief.

“thank you,” S huffed, petting P on the skull through the blanket, who responded with a bit of fussing but seemingly settled down.

S picked up his picture book and set it back on his lap. The shuffle of pages brushing against each other made P babble in curiosity: a few fussy noises and clicking his jaw. S patted him on the face again and P huffed faintly.

“go back to sleep. g don’t want you to be awake yet.” S chattered and P made imitating noises. The older brother went back to reading through the picture book; P coughed a few times and S spotted his hands flailing about but the baby didn’t make anymore noise.

A few minutes passed without fanfare until the older subject perked up at the distant chime of the elevator.

“g!” He sighed in relief. P wheezed and struggled a bit.

S waited with bated breath as Gaster paced down the corridor and it was only when the scientist was standing in the doorway that he realised his mistake. Sitting on the bed and patting P on the forehead was breaking every rule that Gaster had set before he’d left the lab.

“oops.” Was all S managed to get out as his eyes met with his creator’s. Gaster frowned down at him.

“Subject?” He started grimly and S felt his soul sinking, “May I ask why you’re  _ smothering your younger brother? _ ” His voice rose rapidly at the end of the sentence and S flinched back in surprise.

“uhh..”

Gaster strode forward and whipped the blanket off of the youngest subject, who immediately drew in a large intake of air. P tried to whine about it but he was still breathless from his time under the fabric.

P coughed violently and gazed up at Gaster pathetically, claws twitching against the white bedsheets. The scientist’s face softened at the sight and S choose that moment to creep around the side of the bed, scrambling off of it to go hide in the office. He made it to the edge of the bed before Gaster coughed pointedly.

“You still haven’t answered me.” The scientist reprimanded, his face turning to Subject S and the corners of his mouth dipping into a scowl.

S paused halfway off the bed, feet dangling mid-air. He didn’t meet Gaster’s gaze.

“wh - what’s ‘smothering’?” He asked instead, legs kicking out as he felt guilt sinking into his chest. Gaster sighed and pressed two fingers to the space between his eyes.

“By the gods, I knew you were slow but this seems a bit much.” The scientist scolded, “Don’t try playing dumb - are you trying to go for a new record for fratricide or something as ridiculous? Smothering is when - ” S tuned him out at that point. A lecture was a lecture and once you’d heard one, you’d heard them all.

Gaster could’ve left it at ‘don’t put things on the baby or it dies’. Instead he was angrily gesturing and making passive aggressive comments on the subject’s intelligence.

"Ah- bap-ap-ap,"

P distracted S when he gurgled and flung out an arm to his older brother. S couldn’t tell if he was looking at him or not from the lack of pupils but something assured him that the younger subject was looking at him. He liked to think that it was with forgiveness.

The eye contact between the two subjects was interrupted when Gaster moved in between them, already leaning over P and prying his jaw apart. He’d stopped scolding him at some point and had moved onto excitement about P being awake.

The scientist held out a hand in S’s direction, “You’re closer to the equipment than me. Make yourself useful and pass me the chisel and such would you? I need to take a sample of this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> try not to worry too much about the emergency: only three monsters got sucked into the magical wormhole and gaster was more annoyed about the paperwork than anything :D
> 
> also all of this chapter was inspired by my cousin, who had a habit of stuffing pillows on his sister when she made noise. lucky we never left them unsupervised..


	18. Eggs And Bakey

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> despite having the second part written up for weeks now this still took a while. i'm trying to make the chapters a bit longer since there's 17 chapters and only 30k words? seems a bit dodgy to me.

JOURNAL ENTRY 566:

Subject P is awake and sooner than I’d expected. S keeps asking when he’ll start speaking and I don’t have the heart to tell him that P may never speak at all depending on how extensive the damage may be. But P has only been awake a few days so perhaps I’m being impatient; it took Subject S about a month or so to start speaking after all.

I’ve put the full account of his awakening inside the project file for Subject P.

 

\---

 

The first call of his name didn’t wake him up completely. He floated between conscious and unconscious in some kind of void.

The spell was broken when they called out his name again.

“g,” Subject S whined and the scientist was blinking himself awake and turning his head blearily towards the source of the voice.

S’s silhouetted form came into focus, outlined by the low intensity lighting of the hallway behind them. The scientist had started leaving the lights on while his eldest subject was asleep after suddenly developing a fear of the dark from who knows where. Their shadow shifted across the floor as they rocked back and forth.

He rolled his jaw a few times before he spoke but Gaster’s reply still came out raspy, “What is it?”

“he cries.” Was all the little monster managed before their mouth unhinged in a large yawn. Their head dipped down to rest against the doorframe, exhausted.

Now that Gaster listened for it, he could hear the faint echo of his youngest test subject wailing their non-existent lungs out. He copied S’s yawn but couldn’t find it in himself to move. S made an impatient sound and trotted closer.

“stop him crying, g.” He pleaded, coming up alongside the bed and peeking his head over the edge. He fixed him with a moody look and started tugging at his creator’s shirt-clad shoulder.

“ _move_.” S demanded and Gaster mustered up a groan.

“Fine.” The older skeleton grumbled and stuck a foot out into the chilled air of the lab. S gave him an expectant look so potent that he moved his other foot outside of the blanket as well.

Heaving himself to his feet, Gaster rubbed a hand over his jaw and squeezed his tired eye-sockets shut. With his eyes closed, he felt more than saw when S moved.

“Really now?” He asked his creation over his shoulder. S paid him no mind and shuffled into the warm spot on the mattress the scientist had left behind, curling up happily.

“shush,” S mumbled, eyes already closed and tail tucked in between his teeth. The other monster rolled his eyes and stumbled out of the spare room.

“I need to stop falling asleep at the lab,” He yawned, squinting and feeling his way down the dim hallway with P’s yelling getting louder with each step. After what seemed like an age, his weary hands hit the doorframe and P’s cries rose to a peak.

“Quiet down, will you? There’s nothing worth making a fuss about.” Gaster said, his voice near enough drowned out by his subject’s.

P quieted down slightly but considering how loud he had been to begin with, it wasn’t much of an improvement. Gaster stood dumbly in the doorway for a moment before he felt a new presence at his side.

“good job,” S commented humourlessly and quiet under P’s wailing and the scientist had the idle thought that someone so young had no business sounding so dour. He frowned down at his oldest subject and wondered what he was doing out of bed.

“Well, what would you do then?”

The younger skeleton shrugged, “pick ‘im up?”

“No thank you.” He replied stoutly.

Gaster paused in thought to tap on his jaw, leaning over P’s wriggling form. An idea came to his mind like a knock on the back of his skull.

“Give me a moment.” He said, striding out the room hastily. S leaned sleepily against the doorframe, white pupils hazy.

The little monster was awoken from his dozing when Gaster bustled back into the room with something in his hands.

S shuffled closer curiously as the scientist threw his arm over his baby brother and stuck the new object into his mouth. P instantly quieted to tiny whimpers and sobs, watery eyes fixed on the face above him.

“There.” Gaster sighed in relief, resting a hand on his hip as the other one came up to rub his eye sockets, “Now I’m going back to bed.”

“woah,” S jumped forward, scrambling over the side of the bed, “what you do?”

“It’s a dummy. It should keep him quiet for a while.” The scientist replied, backing out of the doorway now that P was completely quiet, “Oh, and subject?”

“yeah?” The older brother didn’t look up at him, instead watching the brightly coloured plastic bobbing between his baby brother’s teeth.

“If he starts making a fuss, please don’t wake me up again.” Gaster bemoaned. He didn’t wait for S’s reply and just returned to his own room.

He’d never been happier to let the door swing shut behind him, blocking the light streaming in from the hallway.

The older monster was tempted to push a box up against the door to stop him coming in but the idea seemed a bit too childish. And knowing his luck, S would probably get past the obstacle anyway.

Collapsing onto the hard mattress of the spare bed, the scientist was asleep in record time.

 

\---------

 

JOURNAL ENTRY 567:

Subject P seems to be the most childlike of all the subjects I’ve had so far. Of course, it’s probably the effect of the recipe for the growth serum I used on them. I started out with Subjects P through T and gave each of them a different type of serum. Q grew the fastest, to the point of horrific mutations, with eventually their own misshapen soul being pierced by a stray rib. R was the next in line but mutations as well and their growth was uneven throughout their body: an oversized head and legs but their ribcage was too small for their developing soul.

At first glance, it would seem that S has been the most successful but after the incident with the abnormal growths and the subsequent and no doubt painful decaying inside of their soul, I’m not entirely sure. T seemed successful too but at the cost of absolutely no magic to speak of. T could barely hold their physical form together and I don’t think Subject S even noticed that T’s spine collapsed so often that he couldn’t move his legs.

P seems to be a better alternative but I have my doubts. I have slight suspicions that P has some kind of brain damage but only time will tell at this point. The downsides to not having access to more specialist equipment, I suppose.

Maybe after (Reformating Note: “my boys” is crossed out here) the subjects are grown up, I’ll see about making another batch.

  
  


\---

 

“no bro, no. card goes here! not in your mouth.”

P ignored him and continued to chew on the playing card in his mouth, propped up in a sitting position by the mass of pillows behind him. His older brother sighed in exasperation but was smiling despite it all, his own hand of cards forgotten.

The card turned to mush fast: the youngest monster’s tongue came and went since as an infant he had no real control over it but apparently P had summoned it just for this. P held up the wet, crumpled remains of it to the other subject.

“Ahba?” P asked, waving it about before his grip slipped and it dropped to the mattress they were sitting on.

“ewwww, gross!” S giggled. He kicked a foot out at the soggy mush and it went flying off the bed. There was a splat when it connected with the floor and a sigh echoed from Gaster. It had landed a few inches from his boot, but he simply continued to read from the chair he was reclining in. Judging by his reaction, it wasn’t the first time he’d almost been hit by a stray, wet projectile.

His youngest subject squawked loudly and leant forward, trying to see where his brief snack had disappeared to. He nearly fell forwards off the bed so S dived forward and tackled him, sending cards flying in all directions.

“careful!” S grumbled, grinning down at his pinned sibling. P responded with a few wet gurgles, bringing his hands up to pat the side of S’s skull. By the trail of drool running down his jaw, the older subject guessed that he was having trouble dissipating his tongue again. A telltale sign that he was hungry again.

“g!” He called out, easily dodging another swipe of his brother, “g, i think p is hungry.”

Gaster idly flicked a page of his book but glanced up as S cried out in surprise when P landed a swat on his nose.

“Hmm, how can you tell?” The scientist asked, watching his older subject roll away from the flurry of his brother’s flailing arms with a high-pitched giggle.

“‘cause he’s all drooly and stuff,” S yelled, cartwheeling backwards but P fell forward and gripped onto his brother’s leg.

“Blblbluh,” The baby proclaimed and promptly latched his mouth onto S’s foot.

S let out another shriek of laughter and tried tugging his limb away.

“urgh! p, that's  _ gross! _ ” He scrunched up his nose and nudged at P’s forehead with his free hind leg.

Gaster folded his book closed with a loud snap, heaving himself up with an even noisier sigh.

“Would you two quit making a racket if I get P something to eat?” He huffed and S shrugged in response.

“maybe,” Was all he said before he went back to prying P off his ankle.

The scientist couldn't help but snort at the sight - he knew from experience that nothing short of a crowbar could pry one of his subjects off if they really clamped down.

He wandered off into the main room and by the time he returned, the two brothers were still rolling around on the bed.

The older skeleton cleared his throat and gave the container a little shake, the pills inside rattling around the plastic. P let go of S at the sound of it and tried to crawl away with fussy whines.

“Oh quit making a big deal of this.” Gaster sighed, dragging P closer by the ankles effortlessly while S dodged out of the way. The younger skeleton started to cry.

“shhh, shhhh,” S tried petting P on the forehead but his younger brother continued fuss and sob.

“He doing it for attention,” Gaster said as he unscrewed the plastic lid. “I've been reading up about child rearing and apparently they do that sometimes.”

The older subject gave him a doubtful look as P let out another piercing shriek but didn’t stop his creator as he shook a few glowing green tablets into his gloved hand. S frowned down at his brother, who hiccuped and gazed up at him wretchedly. 

“uhh, g? i don't think he likes those things,” S mumbled, continuing to comfort P despite how ineffective it seemed to be. In all honesty, he couldn't blame the baby for being scared of them - they hurt ever so much. “why can't he just eat people food?”

“Because these tablets are the closest thing I can simulate to a parent-child bond without operating in his soul.”

“yeah but you didn't do that for me.” The older brother argued and his creator rolled his eyes.

“Subject, you were on a soul drip for a long time and the long term use ended up giving you a temporary case of soul rot,” He edged closer to the baby, much to the distress of both his subjects.

S was reluctant to interrupt anymore science things after his previous experiences but even to him this seemed unnecessary.

“can't you just give him food, g?” S tried one last time, nearly shouting over the sound of P’s frightened wailing.

Gaster paused to send him a baleful look, “I've already explained this. P is much too young to eat solid food since I'm half sure that at this point he'd still be connected to a parent monster. I doubt he even has the mental processing power to swallow something.”

“can we try anyway?” The brother pleaded.

There was a tense moment as the scientist and his experiment squared off against each other. But S held his stare and eventually Gaster backed down with a shrug.

“Fine. We can try it.” He groused, stalking out of the room to fetch some real food. S grinned in victory.

“you ready to try some people food, bro?” He asked his little brother, who gurgled up at him happily now that Gaster and therefore the pills were gone.

The scientist returned after a brief pause, a baby bottle full of a dull green liquid held in his right hand and a thick towel draped over his left arm. S was about to question him but the skeleton held up a hand to stop him.

“If we’re going to do this, then we’re going to do it my way.” Gaster stated, swirling the contents of the bottle around to make sure they were properly mixed together. Peering at the bottle closely, he seemed satisfied enough and reached out towards the youngest subject.

P, who had seemingly forgotten about the pills earlier, batted at the baby bottle curiously. S watched them both warily but all Gaster did was scoop P up into the crook of his arm.

The baby skeleton wiggled slightly but didn't do much more than that, staring up at Gaster. When the scientist pressed the tip of the bottle to his mouth, he latched onto it quickly and tried to chew it with his uneven teeth.

The scientist shifted his grip and pulled the rubber teat out of the youngest brother’s mouth, “No, no, no. Don't bite it, silly boy.”

P whined in complaint and S leant in closer as Gaster tried again, offering the bottle up again.

It took two more tries but eventually the subject got the idea, refraining from pressing down too hard with the few teeth he had. He started to drink but was interrupted when Gaster muttered a curse and pulled it away once more.

“AH!” P huffed in annoyance, squinting up at his carrier furiously.

“The towel isn’t thick enough.” He groaned, moving P into a more comfortable position on the now damp towel and matching the baby’s frustrated squint with one of his own.

“Try actually drinking it this time and not just putting it in your mouth, would you?” Gaster scolded him. P ignored him and stuck his mouth on the bottle again.

“what’s he doin’ wrong?” S asked and Gaster gave him a moody glare.

“Skeletons, as monsters lacking a solid digestive system, have to actually concentrate to eat or drink.” He explained, “Or else it simply goes through them.”

P made a few wet giggling noises at the weird tickle of the liquid trickling out the bottom of his jaw and soaking into the towel. The scientist groaned in frustration and held the bottle out of the skeleton baby’s reach.

“That’s it. It’s getting on my clothes and quite frankly it feels  _ disgusting _ .” The older skeleton lamented, paying no mind to P’s angered babbling as he set him back down on the bed, “I should’ve known that you were too young for this so it’ll have to be the tablets.”

“no!” S protested, “g, you can’t do that. they really hurt and he don’t like that.”

Gaster shrugged and deposited the towel next to P’s wriggling form, “Unless you can get him to take the milk then - ”

“i can do it!” His eldest subject interrupted him eagerly, shrinking back when Gaster frowned at him.

“i’ll get him to drink, okay?” S offered a bit quieter, already tugging at his brother’s shoulders and pulling him onto his lap. He reached out for the baby bottle in Gaster’s hand.

The scientist looked between the bottle and his creations a few times before he seemed to come to a decision. He handed it over to the subject and took the time to move S’s arms into the proper position.

“Let me know when you need me to feed him properly,” He muttered, more focused on the large wet spot on his sleeve than the two subjects huddled on the bed.

And just like that they were left alone. S watched the doorway nervously for a few beats but when there was no sign of Gaster’s return, turned to his brother with a bright smile.

“we can do this.” S repeated, holding the bottle closer to his brother.

“AH.” P agreed loudly, bringing his hands up to grip onto the other skeleton’s fingers wrapped around the bottle.

Half an hour later, the older subject came rushing into the main room, covered head to toe in glowing green liquid but holding up the empty baby bottle with a triumphant grin.

Gaster had concerns about how much of it went into P’s system but couldn’t help but feel a smidgen of pride, hiding his crooked smile from S's eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> why does gaster have a dummy/pacifier in the lab?? nobody knoooows.
> 
> (but seriously he went out and bought a bunch of baby stuff the day after P woke up. don't worry, he's not that creepy...)


	19. Doubt

JOURNAL ENTRY 575:

Subject P may not be a lost cause yet. Although it has been several weeks since he has learnt how to drink without it falling out the bottom of his jaw, there are still no signs of coherent speech or walking. Instead, he has managed to master the art of asking for things wordlessly and between my two subjects, they’ve managed to form quite a double act. Perhaps I need to stop planning things along the timeline of a skeleton monster’s development and more for a general monster. Mixing monster genes so carelessly was probably not my brightest idea.

 

\---

 

“say ‘ah’?”

His younger brother stared at him intently, his head tilted to the side before reaching over and patting the other skeleton on the nose.

“Bap.” P giggled, repeating the action a few more times until S had to pull his head back for fear of shattering his nasal ridge.

“no bro, it’s ‘ _boop_ ’ and we’re not playing that game anymore,” The older subject bemoaned, dropping the marked card with an over-dramatic flourish. He’d been attempting to teach them some measure of wingdings while they waited but it was going nowhere fast.

“ _Ooooo_!” The toddler squealed in return, mimicking his brother delightedly and flapping his out-stretched hand. He leaned forward to try and swat S once more but the older subject caught onto the game and dodged easily.

“nope, no more.” The subject’s gaze trailed over the scattered cards as he adjusted his limp arm in the sling. A grin stretched over his face as he came up with an idea.

P gurgled curiously as S pawed through the cards until he found the one he was looking for and held it up triumphantly.

“ _ooooo?_ ” The older brother asked hopefully.

“Oooo!” P yelled in response, grasping hands reaching for it, “Ooo- _ah!_ ”

S handed the card over without protest, laughing with the pride that he’d finally managed to teach his baby brother something. He wasn’t at all surprised when the picture of a flag made its way into the little monster’s mouth.

“Ooof.” He chirped, pointing at his own stuffed mouth and S kept on giggling.

“yeah p, that’s the sound.”

The older subject looked over his shoulder, hoping to be met with Gaster’s approving smile - only to be blocked by the front article of the newspaper he was reading. The child’s grin faltered and he swallowed his disappointment.

Gaster reading a newspaper was not an uncommon sight. S had been interested at first - large swathes of text with lots of black and white pictures interrupting every now and then of weird squishy monsters and weird objects.

But after realising the whole thing was written in common, he’d been deterred. In his opinion, reading wingdings was _far_ easier than reading common speak. How were you supposed to tell the difference between letters with common? If you added a little line on one of them, it suddenly became a whole different word!

So after the first time the scientist had left a stack of newsprint lying around and he’d sneaked a peek, he'd spent a few hours squinting at the tiny print. After realising it made no sense anyway, subject found himself a little discouraged from trying again at that point - something that both amused and bemused Gaster in turn. S would rather stick to his own storybooks instead of his creator’s weird adult storybook that wasn't really a book at all.

The older subject was snapped out of his musing by a fussy whine from P. He’d noticed that his brother was distracted and huffed noisily to get his attention back on him.

“Ooo?” P mumbled again, pulling the scrap of the card from his teeth and plopping it on the pile of cards. S grinned down at him.

And then promptly looked away again.

“g?”

The scientist made a humming sound of acknowledgement but didn’t expend more effort than that, deeply engrossed in an article. He flicked the page over and shook it back out again.

“g? p’s making noises.”

“That’s nice.” Gaster replied absently and S huffed.

“g,” The younger skeleton stressed, “he’s making the right noises. i think he’s learning to speak!”

There was a pause as the scientist tensed slightly. Gaster folded the newspaper in half and peered at his creation.

“Subject, I’ve already explained this to you,” He began with exasperation in his tone, “He’s just copying off you and if you ask him again in a few hours, I doubt he’ll remember it. Would you just give up already and focus on the more important things?” He gave the younger monster a meaningful look, pupils flicking to his damaged arm.

S shook his head, “nuh-uh, no he’s not copyin’. he’s learnt stuff already!”

He shuffled around until he was sitting directly in front of little brother and held up his healthy hand expectantly.

“p, high five!”

Gaster watched in an amused silence as the youngest of the three stared at the offered hand in confusion. He opened his mouth to scoff at the attempt but was interrupted when P lifted up a tiny clawed hand of his own and placed it solidly, if a little clumsily against S’s palm.

“Boo,” The toddler said solemnly and his older brother cheered with pride.

“good job, bro,” He patted his brother on the head, who squealed in response and fell over

trying to avoid the incoming petting. S gave Gaster an expectant look, understandably a bit smug as P rolled around on the floor behind him.

Gaster frowned at him, something strange edging his expression and the older sibling felt his mood dip slightly. Did he look.. worried?

“That doesn't prove anything and you know it. How is your arm doing?” The scientist said, unwilling to explain his youngest creation’s mental state anymore than he already had done, “You should be focusing on reconnecting it, not- ” _wasting_ “ -playing with your brother.”

“i am,” The younger skeleton insisted, brows creasing anxiously, “i just wanted to stop p crying.”

“We’ll do it in the other room next time. Away from Subject P.” Gaster’s frown deepened as he recalled how much noise his youngest creation had made when he'd pulled S’s arm apart. It wasn’t like he couldn't put it back together, he’d grumbled as had P cried into his brother’s shoulder.

S was still looking down at his dead arm thoughtfully, barely registering the scientist talking to him.

“g,” The little monster started, “can i ask a question?”

“Subject.” His designation said with a warning tone was answer enough but he decided to push on anyway.

“what- what does the p stand for?”

Gaster blinked, caught off-guard and S took his silence as lack of understanding.

“because my name is s which stands for subject an’ your name is g which stands for gaster so what does the _p_ stand for?” The child finished with a huff, watching the older skeleton closely.

“Well,” Gaster paused, trying to figure out a way to explain it in simple enough terms. He folded up his newspaper and set it aside. Subject P ate another card while his brother was distracted.

“S doesn't stand for Subject. It doesn't stand for anything really - it’s just the order I made you in. Same with your brother.” He explained and S went back to staring at his arm.

“but i thought subject was my name?” He asked with visible confusion, “what does the s stand for?”

“It isn't your name.” The scientist repeated, frustration creeping up on him, “You don't _have_ names.”

“can we have names?”

“ _No.”_

“No!” Came a giggle from behind the older subject.

S whipped around in shock and the toddler smiled at the attention.

“No, no,” Subject P chanted, smacking his hands against the hard metal floor, “No no _no.”_

“Oh no.” Gaster stared at his youngest charge with despair.

“No!” P repeated cheerfully and his older brother broke out into giggles and snorts.

“told you he was smart,” S grinned up at the scientist, unbelievably smug. Inside of the sling, his fingers twitched a fraction.

It went unnoticed by the older skeleton however, since he’d buried his face in his hands, swearing profusely under his breath.

The older brother frowned down at his own limp arm as the feeling started to come back into it in painful stabs of sensation. He hid his wince of discomfort though when Gaster lifted his head up again.

He didn't tell Gaster about regaining control over the limb though, not entirely eager about resuming their testing with the unbearable pain. And besides, he wanted to try teaching P some words other than “ _no.”_

  


\---------

 

 

JOURNAL ENTRY 576:

Shit.

 

\---

 

W. D. Gaster let his skull fall onto his office desk with a solid ‘ _thunk’._

If anyone had asked him what he was doing in that moment, his answer almost certainly wouldn't have been hiding. Imagine it - the Royal Scientist _hiding_ in his office like a child!

Unfortunately, that was exactly what he was doing.

He groaned his discontent into the hardwood surface, a few loose papers ruffled by his huffing breath. He hadn't wanted this to happen. He didn't want any of this to have happened.

After sacrificing nearly a year and a half into this project, the scientist felt himself on the edge of giving up. He could take S being sentient - it was an unfortunate side effect but he supposed it helped his case with Asgore after what he'd promised to him years ago.

But his vessel, his home-grown new body was developing an _awareness_. It had all seemed like fun and games when he was teaching the older brother how to eat and speak but he’d never intended to possess S. He had never wanted children and he didn't find the idea appealing even now. He was wrestling with ideas on what to do and found himself arguing with this new ‘conscience’ of his.

Despite his determination at the beginning to see this idea through, his willpower was waning. The subjects seemed more like real children to him now than ever before and his reluctance to hurt them was like a solid weight in his empty abdomen.

Gaster pillowed his head in his arms and repeated what his mentor had told him years ago. The was no conscience in science. Of course, that saying had lead to his demise but the principle had been sound. He tried to think as savagely as possible.

He always had the option of crippling P somehow, to save him the trouble. Something fragile in his devastated soul reminded him that this was a _child_ he was thinking of but those creatures in the other room could hardly count as monsters, right?

It was easier if he imagined them as objects with an easily defined purpose in his goals but then remembered how pleasantly they had smiled at him when he had arrived today. Even Subject S’s eagerness to participate in the day’s experiments had been refreshing, before P had started wailing at the sight of his brother in bits and pieces.

S was about the age of a five year old, which made it easier to explain his reasons to them. Well, more like _lying_ about them but anything to get the kid to quit screaming whenever he had to chip a section off his sternum for testing. But for P? P was a _baby,_ no more than about two years old and it was horrifying at times. He would squeal and scream and cry over the tiniest of issues and louder than Subject S had ever been, even when the scientist had been so careful to be delicate with his creation’s innards. Even when the older monster had stuffed a scrap of cloth in his mouth to try and muffle the noise. Gaster found himself walking out of the room mid-procedure because he was starting to get a headache from it all.

Of course, he'd had to stop that after S had come chasing after him, wondering why his baby brother was lying with his ribcage split open mid-vivisection and bleeding copious amounts of orange all over the main lab.

No, the older sibling hadn't been too happy about that.

It had bothered him more than he cared to admit.

His eyes flicked over one of his other journal entries.

_‘Subject P may not be a lost cause yet.’_

He scoffed to himself. He couldn’t keep messing them around anymore. He had to decide what he was going to be to these two kids.

Gaster could be a scientist, cold and rational in all the ways he hadn’t been in the past few months. No more bedtime stories or letting them sleep in his bed after a nightmare. He’d stop bringing them treats from the canteen and instead be focused and determined in his work.

Or he could be something else. No more operations and trying them down to hard steel workbenches. He wouldn’t raise a knife to them and would fill their time with stories and sweets and play. The thought of it made him sick - his work would fall to the wayside and he would never be able to save his rotting soul or his dying body and all because he blanched at the thought of sawing open a child’s rib cage.

If his mentor were still alive, he’d be laughing hard enough to set the place on fire.

He lifted his head up and reached for his desk drawers. In the very last draw, he flicked pieces of paper and dried up pens aside until he found it. Subject S’s worksheet.

The top half of the page was covered in scrawled wingdings, all of the pictograms lopsided and unskillfully drawn. Shifting a newspaper and some notices about lab cleaning out of the way, Gaster placed the paper onto his desk and smoothed it out carefully with trembling hands. His eyes didn't rest on the letters but the large black scribble at the bottom of it.

That was him. The _scientist._

Gaster didn’t know if he had it in himself to be that brutal anymore. He placed his hand over the crude picture of S and T.

“No!”

Of course, he’d probably lose his job if he didn’t.

“shush, bro.”

And he’d most certainly die. But could he really be -

“‘Sta. Sta- sta- no! No, no.”

He looked up from the child’s drawing to find the artist themselves, carrying his brother with his arms wrapped around the baby’s rib cage. They were both giggling to themselves.

“g, look what i taught him.” His eldest was beaming.

Gaster couldn’t muster up an expression but it didn’t seem to be obvious to his subject because the little skeleton was holding his arms out and grasping at the air like he wanted the scientist to pick him up while S strained to hold him up higher.

“Gah- Gassta. Gasta.” Subject P chirped and his older brother set him down so he could high five them properly with his reformed arm.

Could he really be a _father_ to them?

He looked down at the black ink stain on S’s drawing and thought of his own decaying soul that was throbbing with agony even now. His fingertips were melting against the page where they rested on the tiny sharp-toothed picture of Subject T.

No. He couldn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alternate title: gaster persuades himself to stab kids in the name of science
> 
> also remember that picture gaster pocketed in chapter 10?


	20. Designation

JOURNAL ENTRY 578:

(Reformatting Note: all text is illegible)

\---

The scientist knocked sharply on the door to the subject’s shared bedroom, twice before he opened it with a smooth motion and the laughter that previously floated from the room stopped abruptly.

The two boys were sitting on the cold floor with their backs to the bed and a colourful, well-loved storybook opened in front of them. Subject P was wiggling in S’s lap and they had a blanket underneath them so the chilled metal was more comfortable under their curled tails.

They stared at him expectantly. He cleared his throat.

“Subject S?” Gaster made an unmistakable gesture for S to follow him, “We’re going to try the same experiment again.”

P babbled back at him with fragments of words while S gave his creator a hopeful look from his seat on the floor. He held up the picture book, paying no attention to his younger brother’s noise of surprise as it vanished from the baby’s line of sight.

“we’ve picked some names,” The older subject said with a sly grin.

P squealed when he noticed the book had just moved upwards. “Nah-nah-nam..” He chanted and hummed, kicking tiny feet back and forth. The toddler hadn’t learned many words in the past few days but his vocabulary was increasing fast enough to worry his creator.

Gaster remained silent so S took that as a cue to continue, “p needs something that starts with a p so i looked in my books for names and here!” He jabbed his finger at the page but their creator took no effort to move closer to look at it. He let the storybook drop to the floor with a light smack and decided to tell them instead.

“puffy.”

The scientist snorted, “ _Puffy_ ? As in, the fictional rabbit, _Puffy Bunny_?” And the titular character’s younger sibling, if he remembered correctly. S nodded firmly.

The younger brother looked up at Gaster, then over his shoulder at his older brother with a finger pointed at himself, “Me?” The toddler asked with a half-certainty that told the scientist that the two boys been going over this name business for a while now. Although, even the often oblivious older skeleton could tell that S was quite into the idea of having a proper name.

The other subject shrugged, “it’s the only name i know that starts with _p_ , bro.”

The finger turned on S after that and as P pointed at him, he chirped, “Fuff?”

The meaning of the sound was lost on Gaster but it was enough for Subject S to start giggling.

“i can’t be fluffy bunny!” S protested with heavy amusement, “fluffy don’t start with a s.”

“Fuff! Fuff!” He insisted, waving his tiny finger about and jabbing it into S’s shoulder.

Their creator gave them both a blank look, pupils flicking from the book to their faces in confusion. S was sitting there complacently, sharp claws tapping against the solid cover of the book and crooked teeth bunched together in a toothy smile. With smooth ivory bones and deep black pits for eyes, the child looked the furthest thing from the name _Fluffy._

He barked a short laugh before he spoke, “You can’t just _give_ yourself names. That isn’t how it works.”

S’s gaze fell on Gaster with a dark look and the monster found himself grimacing in return, “i dunno how it works ‘cause you won’t tell us. so i did it myself an’ now we gots names.” He finished with a large intake of breath and wrapped his arms around his younger brother sulkily.

The older skeleton felt annoyance surge through him at his creation’s attitude towards him. It felt a bit silly to expect this of such a young and naive child but there was more to names than just _picking_ one. Then again, it wasn’t like the two subjects were _real_ full-blooded skeletons so why should it matter to him? But still, his soul twinged at the thought of defying centuries worth of tradition and his parents’ long-winded lectures on the importance of it..

“Subject,” Gaster sighed, “You can’t just choose something and be done with it. Names are very important in our culture,” He paused for a moment, wondering if the subjects even counted as a part of skeleton culture, before he shrugged the thought off for later, “There’s serifs, and sans-serifs and even semi-serifs and it all depends on your family and your class on which on you can pick. That’s not even going into the whole business of - ” He interrupted himself suddenly, shaking his head.

His eldest subject was staring at him, slack jawed in confusion, which didn’t help the scientist’s mood at all.

“So that’s why you can’t have a name. Come on, now,” He snapped, stepping forward and beckoning the boy again, “I have to leave for some silly little presentation in half an hour and I want to try out this idea of mine at least once.”

S closed his jaw with quiet click and shuffled away from P, who whinged in annoyance. He pushed away the little skeleton’s grasping hands with difficulty, as if he’d rather be doing anything else.

“let go, bro,” S said softly under his younger brother’s mumbling, “you can’t come with me ‘cause it gets scary in there.”

He disentangled himself from P’s hold and started towards Gaster with as much dignity as he could manage but diverted after a few steps. The subject took a moment to pull a stuffed animal from the bed and gifted it to his brother, who cheered happily enough. Smiling as P squeezed the stuffed elephant close to his body, S joined his maker in the doorway and his smile dropped a fraction. He looked up at the older monster with scrutiny in his gaze.

“are you gonna help us pick names then?” The boy asked and Gaster felt his face shift into a grimace. Remembering his pledge in the office, he tried to steel himself.

“No,” He replied carefully, “Because things can’t have names.”

S looked wounded and he almost felt a twinge of regret. Almost. He brushed it off as fast as he could and stalked out of the room. He didn’t need to look behind him to check if his creation was following him, confident in the unspoken threat of him performing the operation on the other available subject if S was too disobedient.

They made it to the main lab without issue and when Gaster heard his subject step into the room behind him, he patted the gurney without a glance behind him.

He heard the telltale noises of the child scrabbling onto the gurney as his hand hovered over the equipment set out neatly nearby. After a long pause of silently deliberating the tools in front of him, he picked up a set of small pliers and a scalpel and turned to face the subject.

“Do you want me to strap you down or do you think you can stay still this time?” Gaster asked pleasantly and distant, unsurprised when S didn’t meet his eyes.

 

\---------

 

JOURNAL ENTRY 579:

The experiment isn't going very well. This procedure doesn’t usually take that much magic and yet -

 

\---

 

Gaster bent down to scrawl something in his journal, paying no mind to the stifled cries behind him.

S sobbed noisily and the scientist felt it more frustrating than anything.

It wasn’t like the idea was ridiculous or unheard of - detaching and reattaching limbs was second nature to a skeleton afterall. A consequence of having such weak magic as a subspecies…

So it was a bit aggravating when an already well-established fact was being so nonchalantly defied right in front of his eyes. He’d tested the supposed limits of a skeleton on himself before but when he had tried to push past those limits, he’d cowed under the pain of it. Hence, he knew the approximate amount of magic needed to separate limbs completely but this was taking a lot more magic than he’d predicted it would for someone vaguely in S’s age range.

It should have worked. Despite his abnormal appearance, the subject in question was a perfectly normal skeleton except...not quite..

The scientist let the realisation wash over him in waves. Of course, S wasn’t a _normal_ skeleton, he had Gaster’s genes as a base and core makeup but the rest of him was a haphazard mess of combined monster genes from what he managed to scrounge up from the biology department. It had been in the hopes of creating a body stronger than the form he had currently and he wondered…

S let out another muffled shriek of distress in the background that went unheard as the scientist giddily wondered if he’d finally succeeded in making a _stronger_ species of skeleton. If it took more magic to pull it apart, then surely there must be more magic going into keeping it together? Did the subject have a larger reserve of magic than the average skeleton?

If he had succeeded once then maybe he could do it again. And then again and again until he had an army of them, just like he had promised the king all those years ago and with enough power to finally -

S screamed purposefully and the older monster whipped around to give him a stern look.

The child looked at him with a watery, begging gaze, frightened pinpricks for pupils flicking from Gaster’s unperturbed response to their broken right arm. His wrist was shattered where after twenty minutes trying to untangle the delicate bones from each other, the scientist had snapped in his frustration and smashed the whole damn thing with a hammer.

In hindsight, he’d sort of regretted it. With S’s marrow so heavily composed of Determination, it was going to be a nightmare to get the stain out of the fabric coverings.

The subject whimpered pitifully and the scientist’s expression melted a fraction in sympathy. But only a fraction.

“There’s only two minutes and twenty seconds left on the timer, my boy. Just hold on a little longer and it’ll all be fine.”

The child jerked in his bonds slightly and his creator took the opportunity to peer closer at the disconnected hand.

He’d placed it on a workbench at a distance of about two metres away, which was about as much as he’d managed back in the days when he’d used his own arms. It had been a bit difficult to take measurements with one limb disconnected, he thought with a disconnected sense of amusement. He still had a slight difficulty in lifting heavy objects with the arm even now.

Fortunately, he’d been able to use painkillers on Subject S now as opposed to when he had experimented on himself. It still didn’t remove the trauma of seeing your own body parts bashed apart with a hammer though, hence S’s distress. It was a bit too late to use a blindfold now, though Gaster had still made use of it as a surprisingly effective gag.

Gaster moved to stand next to the bound skeleton, one hand patting the boy lightly on his forehead in a hesitant attempt at comforting them as he watched the timer countdown. The contact must have done something though because they quieted down to the barest hints of a whimper.

“You’re doing very well, my boy,” The older skeleton grinned as the timer ticked down to those final few seconds. It went off with a flurry of beeps but it was silenced in an instant as Gaster paced over to S’s severed hand and the bone chips of his wrist.

“You’re lucky that I’m so experienced with healing magic.” He commented as the subject gave a feeble moan as the monster rebuilt his wrist with the delicate pressure of his magic. Once the fragments were suspended in place with a blue sheen, the scientist loosely fitted his hand back into its proper place and wrapped it all up in soft cloth so it didn’t fall apart. He tied at the elbow with a neat little bow..

S barely registered when the straps were removed, the scientist levered him up into a sitting position and he slumped forward like a ragdoll.

“Easy, boy.” The scientist murmured, balancing the child against his shoulder until they felt stable enough to sit up on their own. He took the time while he was waiting to fix a sling on them and put their fragile arm into a more comfortable position, trying to ignore S’s whimper of discomfort. From the way his soul cringed, he figured he wasn’t very successful.

He waited a few minutes before moving the subject off the table and onto his two feet. Gaster watched as S wobbled slightly and sunk onto all-fours. Or at least he would’ve, if he had all four limbs at his disposal. He settled onto three shaky paws and started to walk with an awkward, lopsided gait.

“Subject?” Gaster asked cautiously, “You’re going the wrong way.”

They continued to stumble further into the room and with each step, the scientist found himself aching to pick the kid up out of pity.

“got- ,” The kid coughed slightly, “gotta m-make my bro’s buh- bottle.”

“I’ve already fed him today.” Gaster replied confidently. Confidently enough that his creation gave him a mistrustful look over his shoulder.

“Liar.”

The scientist huffed, “No, I am not. I’ve already given him a bottle today. It was right after I injected the -” He paused, feeling for the memory but coming up with black sand, “I -... I can’t - ”

The skeleton pressed a hand to his temple, trying to rid himself of his sudden headache by pure force of will. He was distracted by the sudden, jerky motion of his subject nearly falling on his damaged arm when he tried to walk on it out of habit. When they had made it all the way across the room, albeit a bit slowly, S was sweating bullets and his gaze was studiously avoiding looking at his bandaged arm.

Gaster took a moment to look between S and the countertop, raising a brow at both in turn. Usually the kid would jump up on the counter to sort out the formula but after another second of thought, the monster started to fetch items and prepare it.

“what are you doing?” The subject asked suspiciously and the scientist really couldn’t blame him for suspecting foul play. The older monster glanced down at the other at his feet and shrugged one shoulder.

“There’s no way that you’re capable of doing this on your own. Let me handle it.” Gaster replied, hands moving back and forth in the motions of making up a bottle. He felt the air shift beside him and a pressure on his fibula as S moved in for a closer look and couldn’t stop his mouth from twitching into an absent smile.

A few minutes later, the bottle of formula was done but when he turned to hand it down to the boy, he found them asleep on his leg. The scientist snorted but grabbed them by the back of the shirt and hefted their light form into the crook of his arm. Their head flopped onto his shoulder and when they snuffled unto his shoulder, Gaster had to resist the urge to flinch away.

He walked down the corridor from the main room and nudged the door open to the boys’ bedroom with his elbow. He was immediately greeted with a shriek of greeting from his youngest subject.

The monster set a limp Subject S on the bed while P made worried cooing noises.

“What?” P said in an upset tone. They tried to wave their hands around to articulate more but just ended up repeating themselves again, “What, what?”

Gaster shushed them impatiently and leant down to hand them the bottle. P frowned at the sight of it but still grasped for it as hungry as he was. The scientist put it into the baby’s hands, only for it to instantly slip out of them.

He sighed noisily and tried again, this time waiting for P to get a decent grip on it but the same thing happened. His second creation babbled up at him but the attempt at communication was lost on the scientist.

The younger brother babbled a bit louder, almost hilariously angrily so the older monster decided to just give up and picked the baby up. P settled into his arms reluctantly and pouted up at him.

“Ah-bo-bo?” He asked, fingers curling towards the bottle and Gaster held it close enough so he could latch onto it. He stared up at the older monster as he drank, making the man shift uncomfortably as he waited.

When P was done with the bottle, he set it on the bedside table and propped them up in a sitting position. Luckily, skeleton babies didn’t get all that gassy so there wasn’t a need for him to burp him.

Gaster examined them intently, and they returned his gaze. The creator felt himself soften at the sight of such an open gaze. He couldn’t help but be reminded of when S was a much younger and much more naive monster.

The scientist cleared his throat, “Subject P.”

“Suh-buhbuhbuh.” P replied, and the other assumed it was their attempt at saying the word ‘subject’.

“Could,” He paused, “Could you say it again? My name, I meant.”

They squinted at him in confusion, “Suh-bahbah?”

He pointed at the child and started, “P.” Then he pointed at himself and stayed silent, waiting for the other to fill in the gap.

“‘Ster.” P answered happily, repeating the finger motions the man had just done. “P. ‘Ster. P. _‘Ster_.”

“Alright, alright.” The scientist interrupted, “That’s enough.”

P quieted down and although he still continued to do the movements with his finger, the older skeleton counted it as a victory. As he adjusted his hold on the baby, he came to the sudden and uncomfortable realisation that this was the most interaction he’d had with his creation since they had woken up.

The young monster burbled up at him and patted on the arm wrapped around his waist. Gaster found himself grimacing and before he even realised it, revulsion was pushing him to place the younger brother next to his passed sibling on their shared bed a bit more forceful than strictly necessary. Like discarding a doll.

His creation made a loud noise of protest at the rough treatment but it went unnoticed as Gaster stared down at his eldest subject. S had slept soundly through the whole thing and he had the most uncomfortable pang of guilt through his ribs at the sight of their bound arm.

He tried to not wonder if they had any old name books in the family library.

\---------

(Reformating Note: unmarked entry so i’m assuming it’s an addition to the last one. handwriting is weirdly lopsided.)  
what am i doing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> holy moley? 20 chapters? i don't think i've ever put this much effort into a fic before ༼ ಥ ‿ ಥ ༽  
> gaster seems to enjoy having kids until he realises that he's probably gonna have to kill and possess this tiny baby someday which is a bit of a funkiller...  
> also why doesn't gaster realise that suddenly losing an arm is a bit upsetting?? probably because he cut his own arm off on purpose and while hopped up on various drugs so it was probably just an interesting experience to him. this guy's college days must've been mad tho


	21. Name Game

JOURNAL ENTRY 580:

Despite the conclusion I came to a week ago, I’m still finding myself going out of my way to be affectionate. I’m still bringing sweets and giving them pats on the head. Last night, I spent the greater part of the evening dusting off my parents’ over-sized collection of etiquette books and massive reference books on tradition. I’m building myself up for each experiment but as soon as I’m finished, emptiness sets in. The thrill of discovering something new, of getting even an  _ inch  _ closer to my end goal is usually the only thing that motivates me, but now? I’m being all hesitant and it’s frustrating. I never had this problem at the beginning but the only thing that’s changed is the capabilities of my test subjects. Empathy has never stopped me before so why should it stop me now?

 

\---

 

Even though he’d expended far too much effort into digging the name book out of the back-end of the library, Gaster found himself hesitating in giving it to the two subjects.

He tried to think of it in a light-hearted fashion, like when he was teaching S how to read and write. It was all just a test to pass the time.

He stared down at the large, hardbacked book and the ornate swirls curling through the dull red fabric cover. It had been a gorgeous book a long time ago, before age had dulled the it to burgundy and tarnished the gold. Time had given it a faint coating of dust.

Giving them names seemed like crossing a line. The scientist, with a childhood as lonely as his had been, had a habit as a child of trying to adopt smaller, dumber animals. At one point, he’d trekked all the way through the garden with a wood cage and caught himself a little beast of a mouse. It had talked nothing like a monster would but it had squeaked in terror the same as he knew the bullies from his school would it they were in a cage.

He’d carried his prize all the way up to the house and shown his mother with a wide grin.

He couldn’t think of a name but with such a lovely patch of brown fur along their backs, the boy had wanted to call him something sweet. He’d stuck his fingers through the bars of the cage and gently poked the animal’s back, fur and flesh so soft against his solid bone and it had made such a noise of fright. When he’d asked for his mother’s help on picking a name, her face had curled into a look of distaste and had his nanny release the mouse into the garden in less than a heartbeat.

‘ _ Don’t name things you can’t keep. You’ll just get attached and it’ll upset you more when they go away. _ ’ She’d scolded him, but her face had softened in an instant at the sight of his tears.

‘ _ It would be cruel to keep that mouse locked up, angel.’ _ She’d cooed to him and Gaster had wondered why. Was his company not enough? It wasn’t like he would have refused to feed the little animal on purpose or for the fun of it so why -

But that was all he could remember and as the scientist tapped the soft bones of his fingers against the front cover, he let the uneasy feeling sink into his ribs. Gaster swallowed the feeling down into his gut.

He was sure that naming his boys wouldn’t mean he’d automatically become  _ attached _ to them. A tiny voice nagged at the back of his mind, pointing out that he probably already  _ was  _ but he ignored it with ease like all the times before. And besides, if he did get attached then he’d just have to keep them with him forever.

He marked the page on script typefaces and carried it down to the spare room, his bedroom.

“wha’s tha?” His older creation asked around a mouthful of hard boiled sweets, colourful and shaped like fish. The child had woken up in a daze a day or so after the experiment, then promptly vomited sour magic over the side of the bed. He’d refused to even be in the same room as the scientist for a long time, until the older skeleton had brought him a peace offering of a bag of sweets and a toy that vaguely resembled a moose. And promised to help them both find names. The toy had been instantly passed to P, who was now going through his own phase of teething while the sweets were carefully rationed between the two of them. The scientist had been concerned over giving P something so hard to swallow, but the baby still struggled to swallow liquids; the sweets fell out of his mouth at any attempt at swallowing. Still, the kid seemed to enjoy putting the fish sweets on his tongue until they went soft and gooey.

The younger brother perked up at the sight of Gaster, sitting up right and propped up against S’s uninjured side. He babbled a few syllables of his name and a long ‘sst’ sound sent a fish falling out the bottom of his jaw.

“It’s a book of names.” Gaster said with some difficulty, and S paused in giving a squawking another handful of sweets to grin up at him with unrestrained hope. He took a moment to lean the other subject against the wall before springing over with excitement, his broken arm held firmly to his chest.

His baby brother gave a burbling noise as if asking where he was going but S was already peering into the massive book the scientist had gifted to him. The child went to turn the page but a hand on his wrist stopped him.

The older brother looked up to find Gaster shaking his head, “No, my boy. You have to pick from these ones.”

The subject’s expression dimmed slightly as he asked, “why only from this page?”

“Because the style of your name is based on your class.” The scientist explained, pulling his pager out of his pocket to check it absently, “My family was considered quite… well-off, so we would have picked them from this page.”

“but what if two monsters have the same name?” S asked.

“That's why we have surnames.” There was a pause and when Gaster looked up from the device in his hands, he found the kid giving him an interested look.

“what's a  _ surname _ ?”

Gaster sighed, though it was tinged with fondness, “A  _ surname _ comes after your forename, or your given name. It's for identifying members of the same family, let's say.”

“oh. g, what's your uh,” The subject’s expression creased up for a second as the they tried to remember all the different names, “surname?” They guessed.

“Gaster.” The scientist replied slowly.

“what's your other name? cause we all get two right?” The subject blinked up at him.

“It’s -” Gaster startled and seeming to remember what he was about to do, scowled at the corner of the room, “None of your business.”

“right.” S mumbled, chastened and instead of staring at his creator, choose to run his thumb along the neatly printed wingdings as he scanned the page.

After a while, his brows creased and he made a confused hum.

Gaster paid him no mind, looking through the messages on his pager. Another notification about the deep clean throughout the facility in the near future, oh boy. And then there was yet  _ another  _ upgrade for the CORE, this time for the ventilation system that the Royal Scientist and half of the engineering department had protested against but the fumes from the thermo-magical transmutation were getting dangerously close to the -

“g? where’s your name?”

Thoughts interrupted, the scientist cocked an eyebrow at his charge. Realising what S was referring to, he couldn’t stop his face from contorting into a grimace.

“g?” S repeated cautiously, looking over his shoulder to check on his little brother. Fortunately, P had only crawled a little bit closer in an attempt to follow his brother but had been distracted halfway through by a stray fluffy duck toy.

“My name, as a surname, wouldn’t be in that book unless it was a genealogy book.” Gaster replied shortly, looking uncomfortable, “Not that my first name would be in the scripts section anyway.”

“Still,” He clapped his hands together as if to dismiss the tension, pager firmly secreted away into his coat pocket once more, “Have you chosen a name yet or what?”

“uhh,” The child paused, “there ain’t a name with an s.”

“It doesn’t have to have to begin with an  _ s _ now, does it?”

“yeah, it does.” S said firmly, ignoring the other’s impatience. Gaster crouched down with his head tilted to take a closer look at the page. The kid nearly shrunk backwards out of instinct but a cooing noise on his left side snapped him out of it.

Gaster pulled the book towards himself while P crawled into his older brother’s lap, blowing raspberries with his tongue as he went.

“p,” The older brother groaned, “put that thing away.”

P blew an especially loud raspberry as if in protest and S had to smother a giggle when Gaster gave them both a disgruntled look.

“How about Segoe?” He offered and his eldest creation grimaced.

“nope. it’s got a g in it.” The younger skeleton responded, as if that was explanation enough. P continued to add meaningful commentary with sounds from his mouth.

Gaster said a few more names and S found even the most unlikely excuses to reject them.

“How about something that ends with ‘script’?” He tried instead, the adult in him despising the frustrating situation but the scientist in him relishing the chance to problem solve through trail and error. S shrugged lazily.

“French Script?”

“nope.”

“And  _ why is that _ ?” The older skeleton growled.

“dunno what a french is. could be something bad.” The older subject grinned cheekily and Gaster was embarrassingly aware that the kid was giving him the runaround on purpose. He huffed, still determined to make them accept one of the names.

“Kuenstler Script?”

“what’s a… one o’ them?”

Gaster laughed despairingly, “I have no idea. I don’t even know if I’m saying it right. Naming convention has never been one of my specialities.”

P shuffled closer and patted him on where his fingers were spread out on the second page, making a slight giggling noise of affection. Gaster felt a surge of annoyance and drew his hand back and out of reach.

He started reading names at random, S’s excuses getting more and more ridiculous until they narrowed it down to three names he had taken a liking to.

“which one do you like, bro?” The child asked his baby brother, who had left at some point to drag the stuffed moose-thing over to sit in his lap.

“Ssss,” Came P’s helpful input and his brother nodded sagely.

“Right,” Gaster frowned. He’d already tried to leave several times but each time had come with a painful reminder that he’d  _ promised _ and that if he didn’t then Subject S would never let him strap him to a table again. So he continued, “We’re down to Tempus Sans, Comic Sans and -” He paused to squint down at the page, “Wiesbaden Swing?”

S nodded with a small smile, “it sounds weird and i like that. what d’ya think of wi-whatever swing, p?”

The toddler scrunched their snout up and made a discomforted sound deep in their throat. His brother took it as a criticism but Gaster knew it had been anything but that when another fish sweet was coughed out of his mouth. The younger subject stared at the coughed-up sweet for a few moments, then put it back in his mouth again. Wonderful.

“So no to the Swing name.” Gaster said with audible relief, mentally crossing off the name, “Tempus or Comic?”

“i don’t like the first parts.” S said after a long while of thought, “i like the sans part.”

The scientist shrugged, fed-up with it all, “Then just take Sans as a name. It’s not like it really matters.”

The subject looked hurt for a moment but then the realisation that he finally had a real name dawned on him and his expression was replaced with glee.

“ _ sans _ .” He cheered, testing out his new name slowly as if savouring it on his tongue. P perked up at the first hint of excitement in at least half an hour.

“Sss?” They questioned.

The newly-named subject sounded his name out to his brother, who picked up on it quickly.

“Sans?” P pointed at his older brother, who nodded in confirmation. There was a pause though, as P pointed to himself and said, “What?”

Sans drew his brows together in confusion for a moment, before he spun around to look at Gaster with glee.

Gaster sighed, pupils already flicking back down to the well-read page of skeleton names.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> why did gaster invest so much time into finding the right name?? possibly boredom while sans' arm heals for the next attempt. most likely because the kid has been bugging him for like two weeks now.


	22. Key Requirements

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the lack of updates, it's been stresstime on my course but it should be over for now?? i think?? i may have missed some written work and i wouldn't put it past them to come burn my house down over it.  
> alt title: gaster is a tea whore and little brothers get all the love

JOURNAL ENTRY 581:

Objectively, it was a very, very bad idea to give them names. But in this instant, I can’t bring myself to care. I’ve secured the cooperation of Subject S in the meantime and that’s all the matters, since for these next few experiments I’ll need the boy’s willpower on my side.

 

\---

 

“Now then,” Gaster huffed, head ducked low as he searched the floor underneath his desk, “Where in the bloody hell did I put my - ”

“g?”

 _BANG_.

Sans giggled childishly as his creator swore loudly, rubbing the top of his skull from where it had smacked painfully into the top of his desk. Gaster slammed his hands on the top of his office desk in frustration and peered over the edge of it.

“Now what the fuck do you want?” He snapped testily, a mad glint to his eyes. Sans took no notice and shuffled into the room properly, one hand stuffing a cracker into his mouth as he went.

“what’chya doin’?” He asked around a mouthful of crumbs, spewing some onto the floor as he spoke. Gaster grimaced at the mess.

“I’m looking for something.” He said shortly, ducking below his desk again and scrabbling about for his missing item.

“Lookin’ for what?” Another flurry of crumbs hit the floor, but the only one who would bemoan them was huddled underneath the solid wood.

“Keycard.” Gaster grunted, hopes rising when he spotted a glimpse of something white but sighed when he found it was only an unread complaint slip from the greenhouses upstairs. He screwed it up into a ball and chucked it behind himself, missing the bin by a few feet.

Sans watched the ball of paper bounce off the wall and roll away complacently until it registered what the older skeleton had said. He perked up in curiosity.

“Keycard?” He repeated carefully, “Like, for the doors and stuff?”

“Yes,” Gaster yelled in frustration, “And I need it so I can leave right now because if I don’t get a cup of tea this minute then I may possibly scream. Or kill all three of us in a justified bout of insanity.” He rambled as he pulled out yet another complaint slip and trashed it, “The courts would never convict me.”

The scientist hadn’t left the lab - or the company of his creations - for a fortnight now and frustrations had been rising the entire time. Losing his keycard was the last straw.

Sans set down his two remaining buttered crackers on the desk and started to quietly look through the papers on the desk for the tiny plastic card. While Gaster finished searching the messy space underneath his desk and moved onto the draws, Sans moved onto looking through the pockets of the older monster’s labcoat. It was dumped unceremoniously on the floor like a large, white puddle or some kind of dead animal, with stains of blue on the one sleeve.

It was in the inner pocket, between two shopping receipts and another plastic card. The skeleton child only recognised it as keycard because it had a rather unflattering picture of the scientist on it, his level of access and the word "KEYCARD" written in bold, black print. He vaguely remembered it as being pinned to the other monster's lapel often.

“g?” He called out.

“Yes, subject?” Gaster peeked over the desk, fixing him with an intense gaze.

Sans palmed the card nervously and out of the older skeleton’s line of sight. Did he really want to give this in? He could use this, get his brother away from here and they could find themselves a real family. They could go on a nice, long vacation without experiments for a bit and- and-

After a moment’s hesitation, he slipped the plastic between his half-healed arm and the thin cotton of his sling.

“this your card?” He asked quietly, holding up the man’s bank card instead, a green piece of plastic with a black strip along the side. Gaster scoffed.

“Not the one I’m looking for, kid. Why don’t you go mind your brother instead?”

“okay.” Sans replied, even quieter than before, almost thoughtful as he trailed out of the room.

“Hang on.”

He stopped, trembling in place.

Gaster strode around the desk and started to advance on the smaller skeleton.

“What’s that in your - ”

He broke out into a run.

“- sling - oh, hang on a minute! _SUBJECT!_ ”

Sans slammed the door shut behind him, hearing the satisfying thud of his creator hitting the door. The older monster was already fumbling with the door knob though so he made a break for the elevator. He heard the whoosh of air as the door was flung open and it only pushed him to run harder. His whole being was single-mindedly focused on the thought of escape - of seeing his real family - of T -

He was nearly at the buttons -

He slammed his hand onto the call button frantically, hearing the approaching grunting of his creator behind him.

The elevator made a loud ‘ _ding_ ’ noise and Sans nearly cried in relief before a large hand wrapped itself around his the fragile bones of his neck and hefted him up into the air.

Gaster held him tightly around the throat and lifted him up to his eyeline, panting harshly.

“You- ,” He laughed, crazed and manic and the smaller monster curled up in fear, “You _dare- ”_

He bent over, heaving and coughing at the sudden exertion caught up to him - the downsides to having such a ravaged soul. Sans squirmed in his unmoving grip, eyes on the flashing red ‘AUTHORISATION REQUIRED’ at the top of the elevator panel. His soul sunk at the sudden realisation, he hadn’t even managed to call the elevator since you needed the keycard to bring it to this floor.

He tried to teleport out of Gaster’s hands but found himself letting out a surprised yelp when the older skeleton stopped him.

The scientist’s gaze was firm on him. He cowered.

“You can’t beat abilities at I have myself, my boy.” He wheezed, pressing down even harder on the length of spine in his hands and causing the child to writhe in borderline pain. Just because he had no visible windpipe, it didn’t make strangulation any better for him.

“My, my. So quick to abandon me - your brother at the first sign of escape.” Gaster mocked, “Are you really that fed up of the two of us?"

He curled up even more, this time out of shame. The other monster was right, he hadn’t even considered his little brother as he was fleeing.

Gaster reached forward with his free hand and plucked the keycard from the boy’s sling. Sans screamed and flung his arm out to hit Gaster, managing to whack the older monster with his claws but without the force needed to really hurt him.

“I see your arm is doing much better,” The scientist commented slyly and the smaller skeleton’s sockets widened in terror.

“No,” Sans muttered, “no, no, no, _no-_ ”

Gaster readjusted his grip and started to walk towards the main lab, “Come on, looks like we can start the next round of experiments today.”

 

\---

 

“stop it, stop it - i _can’t_ ,” Sans hissed, his whole body rocking with the motion of his spasming arm. The air was heavily charged with the sour tang of magic and he could taste it in the back of his throat.

“Yes, you _can_. Remember that you’ve brought this on yourself,” Gaster snapped back at him, his own gloved hands wrapped around the younger skeleton’s humerus and giving small, harsh tugs in an effort to dislodge the bone.

The pain intensified with each jolt and the child wailed as it spread outwards in waves from his shoulder to his chest. His ribcage was hitching upwards violently with each panicked breath and the subject tossed their head from side to side on the headrest.

“can’t can’t can’t ca- ,” He chanted, cutting himself off with a yelp when Gaster gave one final pull with more force than previous, before suddenly he let go of the arm completely. The bones slipped back into place with a painful, grinding feeling of bone-on-bone and the kid let out a pained sigh of relief at the release of tension.

Gaster didn’t echo that relief in anyway, making a loud noise of frustration before he stomped off to check on his notes. His pupils skimmed the clipboard as Sans took the time to recover, panting heavily as his blurry vision flicked dazedly around the lab.

“I just don’t _understand_.” Gaster said in a hushed yell, palm held to the side of his head. Sans held no interest in whatever the monster was doing, eye sockets falling closed as he focused on evening out his breathing. He needed to fix his breathing pattern before the next round started. The feeling started to flood back into his fingers as pins and needles, the phalanges twitching uncomfortably as his body reacquainted itself with the near-separated limb.

The scientist continued to mutter, pacing back and forth between two worktables as he rechecked his equations. The sudden quiet-time after half an hour in pain seemed almost… restful, though he was still tensed in anticipation for the next round. The sounds of fluttering papers and angry muttering was comforting in its familiarity.

The skeleton child was on the verge of falling into an anxious sleep as he waited, not from the calm of the situation but from exhaustion when a little clicking noise from the door drew his attention.

Papyrus was curled around the doorframe with his hind legs out of sight and a nervous tension in the slope of his shoulders. He was looking straight at Sans with obvious concern.

The older brother tried grinning to comfort the toddler but it didn’t work very well. He felt his bony cheeks itch where the tear tracks were drying as he gave a watery smile.

“Aay-ah?” Papyrus asked and Sans’ soul dropped with fear as the toddler started to pad their way into the room on all fours. They hadn’t mastered walking on their hind legs yet but Sans had been so _proud -_

“p, _stop._ ” The child whispered firmly but the other skeleton paid no mind to him.

As he trotted closer, Sans noticed he had his jaw clamped around a small paper bag and flicked his gaze to Gaster nervously. The older skeleton hadn’t noticed the extra company yet but if his brother got any closer then he certainly would.

In no time, Papyrus was trying to scale up the side of the gurney, tail swishing furiously as he tried to pull himself upwards. He dropped back down with a loud scuffing of bone against metal.

“bro, _get out of here_!” The older brother snapped in a hushed voice, panic seeping into his tone as he watched Gaster fussing around on the other side of the room. He waited for the older monster to turn around, to notice, to shout at them both.

“No.” Papyrus replied, voice slightly muffled around the crumpled paper in his mouth and with another great leap, he was scrambling up to join his brother’s bound form.

He dropped the bag daintily and before Sans could utter more than a token protest, was shoving a sweet between his older brother’s teeth.

“No, no,” His younger brother said and the tied-down monster felt himself tearing up for some reason, the hard-boiled sweet dissolving on his tongue and removing the repulsive taste of magical discharge in the back of his mouth. While not famed for their healing properties, the monster candy gave him enough of a magical boost that he could feel his body start to heal from its injuries, if only by a fraction.

He was about to thank him when he heard an exclamation of surprise echo from the other side of the room. He flinched and Papyrus shrunk inwards, subconsciously aware that he was doing something wrong.

“Subject P?” Gaster snapped, storming over from whatever was taking up his attention. “How did you get in here - ” The scientist startled at the sight of the bag, “Are you feeding him?”

Papyrus didn’t answer, out of fear or otherwise.

“I can’t _believe_ this,” He laughed humorlessly, “The last thing the boy needs is _more_ magic when I can barely work against the magic that’s already there - ”

The two subjects exchanged a bemused look when Gaster suddenly paused, a thoughtful expression on his face.

“That- ,” The scientist raised his brows, “That could work.”

He whipped around and started rummaging around in the cupboards behind him. Papyrus took the time to curl up around Sans’ numb arm, either not noticing or politely ignoring the rancid magic dripping from the shoulder joint and pooling on the gurney. Sans watched his creator warily as his digging produced a thin needle with an accompanying tube and a dry sponge cradled in his arms.

Gaster stalked his way back over, barely seeming to register Papyrus as he lifted the child up by the neck and deposited him neatly onto the workbench behind him. The toddler gave a surprised yelp as he was forcibly separated from his brother.

“please don’t,” Sans cried out, meeting Gaster’s gaze fearfully.

The scientist scowled down at his creation, “Don't start that now. You brought this on yourself by trying to leave me- ”

The older brother shook his head violently, “please don't let him watch.”

That seemed to surprise the scientist even more, his brows creasing is disbelief as he glanced between his two charges. He was uncomfortably aware that he could spin this to his favour - strap Subject P down nearby and let him listen. It would certainly take the wide-eyed look from the younger skeleton, destroy the innocence and curiosity in it and replace it was a dull sort of resignation.

Of course, it would also destroy any trust the youngest skeleton had in him, possibly messing up his plans. And Sans might go the opposite way, all teeth and rebellion instead of his current acceptance of his fate.

“please,” Sans pleaded. Gaster felt his eye socket twitch.

So instead of indulging himself in the idea of a double vivisection, he averted his gaze from the both of them and muttered a low “Fine.”

He roughly picked up Papyrus by the scruff of his neck, who barked once in surprise but went limp under his grip. He twisted around in his grip to watch as he was carried away from his brother.

“Buh-bye.” Papyrus chirped, cheerful enough that Gaster had doubts that the toddler even understood what his brother was injured for. His older brother made a noise in response that could’ve been taken as a goodbye but his eye sockets were just a little too wide and his smile was a little too manic.

Papyrus didn't seem to notice and wiggled happily in his creator’s arms, watching the floor with interest as it disappeared underneath Gaster’s feet.

The scientist held the toddler’s body farther away from himself when he tried to squirm around to look at his carrier.

He dropped his creation onto the bed carelessly and Papyrus giggled as he rolled and bounced on top of the duvet. Gaster didn't spare him a second glance and started to leave the room, eager to restart the experiment.

“G- g!” The toddler called after him, “Gi-gi!”

The scientist grit his teeth. He turned on his heel and huffed at his younger subject, “It's Gaster. Not whatever stupid nickname you two have come up with- ”

“Gigi,” Papyrus shouted, reaching his hands up in a clear gesture to be picked up.

Gaster fixed him with a glare and the toddler seemed slightly cowed. They still held their hands up defiantly, though.

“Gigi!”

“Shut up.” He snapped and his creation flinched back even more. They shuffled backwards on the bed and pulled their legs up.

“Gigi?” The baby asked timidly.

“ _Shut up!_ ” Gaster screamed at them, grabbing the nearest object from the floor - a stuffed animal - and throwing it right at his youngest subject. It hit the wall a foot to the right of him 

“Oh- ,” His creator gasped, holding onto his chest with trembling hands. It was if a dam had burst inside of his soul and suddenly the weight of his actions fell onto his very being. He spluttered out an apology, uncomfortably aware that he was apologising for more than just shouting at one of his creations, “Oh god, I’m so sorry.”

Papyrus only started to cry louder, screaming into the bedsheets.

Gaster stumbled closer and gathered his youngest up into his arms, shushing them.

“Subject, I’m sorry - I’m so, so sorry -”

Papyrus whimpered and clung to him even tighter.


End file.
